I'm not sure when PSP comes out in Australia, but it's worth the wait.
Battery life is a lot more than 2-3 hours. It's listed as 3-5 on movies and 4-6 on games. I've never dropped below 2 bars on the meter (2/3 charge) and I've played for a couple hours straight before. It also charges pretty fast. About 2 hours for a full charge. You gotta ask yourself the question "When am I going to be away from my adapter for 4 hours. You can play while charging too, so that's not a concern.
Also, UMDs can't be burned, but you can play MP4 files from a memory stick. A feature lenth movie will encode anywhere from 200-300 megabytes, so a 512 stick is fine. You can find on around for $50-$60. Note that NDS doesn't play audio or video at all.
GTA is announced for PSP. It's called "Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories". Check around the major gaming sites to see info about it. I think there are some screen shots released too.
Sorry if I sound a little enthusiastic, but I really like my PSP. Be sure to check out www.psptown.com for more info. </shameless plug>
The battery life on the PSP flat-out sucks. It most definitely is not "a lot" more than 3 hours, even if you spend that whole time playing something fairly simple from a graphics standpoint, like Lumines (which I recommend without any reservations). Try it with Ridge Racers, and you'll see what i mean. I don't see how anybody can be at all enthused about the battery life of the system. If you (thread author) do end up getting a PSP, and if you do like to actually play your games outside of your home on it, you probably want to invest in a power brick or another battery.
The DS will be able to play multimedia files via an accessory called a "Play Yan" rumor has it. Still, it's not meant to do so, and I doubt that it'll be anything spectacular. On the other hand, multimedia on the PSP is some sorry shit, as well. You probably want to stay the hell away from encoding MP4 files unless you've got money to burn on a large memory stick, and patience for how poorly Sony enabled the feature (over piracy concerns, I've heard). E:\MP_ROOT\100MNV01 my ass.
Of course, if you like GTA, that might be a reason to spring for the system. Note that if you do, though, the extra expense won't end any time soon, since PSP games tend to run around $10 more than DS games. Also, invest in a hard case, the system is fairly frail (not such a big deal for the DS, because it's a clamshell design). And if GTA is your reason for getting a PSP, you should wait until that game comes out, for the larger game library, if for no other reason (the next major release, by the way, is Midnight Club 3--the near future for the PSP is pretty dry, though, unless you like UMD movies).
I myself have bought both systems, and if I had to choose one, I'd choose my DS. I do like a lot of games I've played on the PSP, but there are simply too many racers for that system, with other important genres either unrealized or not fleshed out very well (exceptional games besides racers, though, are Hot Shots Golf and Lumines). If I sound gripey, it's only because I spent a lot of money on the PSP (courtesy of a forced USA bundle) and have found it lacking in some areas that should be integral to the type of system it wants to be. I just feel that Nintendo did a rock-solid job in designing the DS, and now that there is a nice list of releases to look forward to, I couldn't be happier with it. But this might just be post-Kirby euphoria.
