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Sony Media Movies

Sony to Make an "iTunes for Movies" 326

Posted by CowboyNeal from the downloads-jack-can-agree-with dept.
dAzED1 writes "After years of complaining that the RIAA and MPAA were missing the boat, and should have embraced things like Napster instead of supressing them, we got iTunes and the like. Now, Sony has announced it will 'make its top 500 films available digitally in the next year' according to a report on the BBC, with Sony's iPod replacement being the PSP."
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Sony to Make an "iTunes for Movies" More

Sony to Make an "iTunes for Movies"

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  • Shouldn't they just call them (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 31, 2005 @08:51PM (#12106417)
    Walkmovies, since they already have the Walk-thing down?

  • PSP an iPod replacement? HAH! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by kryogen1x ( 838672 ) on Thursday March 31, 2005 @08:52PM (#12106424)
    Not with the expensive memory stick duos or w/o a umd burner it won't.
    • An "iTunes for movies," is not the same as an "iPod replacement," since the iPod itself is obviously useless for movies.
    • They don't HAVE to be expensive... YOu can get even better Memory Stick Duos from people like Sandisk, like this guy (http://www.neowin.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=2 61293 [neowin.net]) did. Sony is inherently going to expensive because they're Sony and they like to drive up the price on their own stuff other than their consoles.
    • still have to get them on the psp, and 2000 songs vs maybe 2 movies doesn't make this a very compelling combo at the moment.
    • they said digitally.. :) dvd's are digital. umd's are digital.

      besides, for sony to manufacture a few gibabytes size of a memorystick wouldn't be that much when considering what the movies would probably cost - but who the fuck would pay dvd prices for something like that? (if going the itunes route it would be pretty much like that).

      I'm more worried about though what qualifies as "top 500".
      • for sony to manufacture a few gibabytes size of a memorystick wouldn't be that much when considering what the movies would probably cost

        Oh really? A 2GB Memory Stick Pro Duo sells for over $300. The manufacturing cost is probably at least $200. Maybe you could use mask ROM instead of flash, but that would probably cost more, not less.

    • Bandwidth? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by ackthpt ( 218170 ) *
      PSP an iPod replacement? HAH! Not with the expensive memory stick duos or w/o a umd burner it won't.

      What kind of bandwidth are we talking here, to download a movie? They can pretty much cross of anyone still on dialup, which is quite a lot, yet. To watch movies on the PSP they'll probably require considerably less than for a TV or decent monitor, so that could help them. Obviously they have their eye on Microsoft and their media center stuff.

      Sony is in a good position to make such an offering with the

    • Suround sound (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 31, 2005 @09:55PM (#12106831)
      Does it come with a surround sound rumbling butt plug? Otherwise that small screen aint going to be too exciting.
    • It should be noted that Sony has just released a 2GB Memorystick Duo (with 4GB approaching). Likelyhood is that by the time that the PSP and this service is at its maturity flash memory prices in GB capacity should be relatively affordable.

      It was not too long ago when 64MB and 128MB flash memory was considered massive. I remember spending ~$150 for a 64MB SD just a couple of years ago. Now, 512MB SDs and MS Duos are going for less than half that. It's not unresonable to think that we could be seeing 1G
    • I don't get who would want a portable movie player anyway. It's good for travelers but who else? You can't go jogging with one. And the screen is too small to be very enjoyable or immersive (unlike the immersive audio only experience of earbud headphones when listening to music).

      I think video just wasn't meant to be portable. When I think about watching a movie, I imagine a nice big screen TV with a surround sound system.

      Audio doesn't have the same restriction because music doesn't generally demand al

  • Prices? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mOoZik ( 698544 ) on Thursday March 31, 2005 @08:52PM (#12106426) Homepage
    What will the prices be like? If anything like iTMS, it should be about $10 a movie, which I think is too much. Of course, when I say iTMS, I refer to the individual songs and not the whole album, which would almost cost the same on iTMS and buying the album. Anyway, should be interesting...at least for those on broadband!

    • Re:Prices? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by jm92956n ( 758515 ) on Thursday March 31, 2005 @08:54PM (#12106452) Journal
      More importantly, will they burden it with an excessively draconian DRM policy? iTunes has been successful mostly because of its (in the opinion of others) liberal DRM.

      If Sony locks their movies down as tight as possible, this service will be dead before it hits the water.

      • Re:Prices? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by EggyToast ( 858951 ) on Thursday March 31, 2005 @09:11PM (#12106569) Homepage
        Not only is the DRM liberal, the file format is high quality and the store is easy to use.

        Sony's Connect store has had rather poor success.

        But regardless of that, the iTMS didn't hit until AFTER the iPod was a success, and controlled most of the HDD MP3 player market. The PSP came out... tuesday.

        I'm all for downloadable movies, or heck, extended trailers or synopses, but people don't buy iPods so they can go buy music from the iTMS -- they use the iTMS because they already have iPods.

        The PSP will not have market saturation for a while, even if it tramples Nintendo's market. And as said above, the thing comes with a 32mb memory stick. Are users really going to shell out another hundred for a 512 stick just so they can watch a heavily compressed movie they purchased online? Or will they simply rip the DVDs they already own?

        Music is great because you can buy just one song for a buck, and it's an aggregate like that -- you get a selection of songs. Movies need to be enjoyed on the whole, in usually a full sitting.

        There just seem to be so many things already stacked against such a service's success. Now, if they were selling TV shows for a buck that would fit on cheaper memory sticks, I could see this having some impact. But, uhh, no, not for the PSP, and not without a device to play them on separate from computers. People buy music for entirely different reasons than they do movies. The fact that you can play both on a computer do not mean that they are consumed in the same way.

        • Re:Prices? (Score:5, Interesting)

          by IANAAC ( 692242 ) on Thursday March 31, 2005 @10:05PM (#12106882)
          I'm all for downloadable movies, or heck, extended trailers or synopses, but people don't buy iPods so they can go buy music from the iTMS -- they use the iTMS because they already have iPods.

          While you and I might think that way, not everybody does. My sister, who is pretty illiterate, technologically speaking, recently was asking what kind of iPod she should get so she could download songs.

          The power of marketing.

        • Well, I would (Score:3, Interesting)

          by Moraelin ( 679338 )
          And it's not even to watch movies on the road. I don't travel much.

          Thing is, I'm lazy. I'm not ashamed to do that. In fact, I'm even proud of it. I even learned good coding patterns and techniques, because it was getting to be too much work to fix a spaghetty mess.

          In this case, I'm too lazy to drive through half the town to a DVD rental centre. I'd really like to watch more movies, but I'm hard pressed to justify a 1 hour trip (total for driving both ways) for a 1.5 hour movie. Actually, make that 2 hours

      • Re:Prices? (Score:3, Insightful)

        by famebait ( 450028 )
        Not necessarily. Unlike music, people are already used to paying to see (not own) movies.

    • Re:Prices? (Score:3, Funny)

      by aussie_a ( 778472 )
      What will the prices be like?

      $0.99 per scene.
    • I get movies for 4 bucks from On-demand. I watch a movie every night.

      They will probably fuck it over with crappy quality and shitty DRM though.

    • Re:Prices? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by EtherAlchemist ( 789180 )

      Well, with the Starz thing Real is doing [real.com], you pay a pretty small price ($13/mo) to download and watch unlimited (well, within the limits of the catalog) movies at your leisure.

      I will now put on my firesuit in preparation for the incoming flames.

  • Read between the lines (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Suhas ( 232056 ) on Thursday March 31, 2005 @08:52PM (#12106435)
    From TFA

    Sony and other movie studios, say Cnet news, are keen to wrestle power, and financial gain, from any single technology giant - like Apple - which has had success with iTunes for music downloads.

    Hmmm....
    • Sony are becoming annoying. Think they can just waltz into any market and try change everything to suit them.

    • Re:Read between the lines (Score:5, Interesting)

      by 2674 ( 661934 ) on Thursday March 31, 2005 @09:02PM (#12106510)
      Sony just wants control of the market., IMHO usually are clueless when it comes to such maneuvers. The NetMD was an abortion. They always try to push their proprtietary formart/device to th market thinking that it will gurantee them market dominance. What the stupid buggers do not realize is that they LOSE market share because of such stupid tactics. Same thing here. They will try something in a similar vein with proprietary stuff, and another apple will come along and take over the market with non-proprietary standard. Like you said, Read between the Lines. They just want to gain control of the market, but are clueless on how to do it.
      • I'm speaking as a Macintosh user since 1988, Windows user since 1993, and Linux user since 1997. Take the following with a grain of salt and not an attempt to start a flame war.

        Apple, too, implements proprietray standards. The Macintosh and OS X pairing is proprietary. So too are the iPod and iTunes marriage.

        Both Sony and Apple have been accused of selling proprietary and over priced hardware. Of course, every company wants to control their market. That's how they pay their stockholders.

        I guess that I d

  • Assinine? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by slashdot4ever ( 760080 ) on Thursday March 31, 2005 @08:53PM (#12106440)
    I can just see this being as successful as their minidisc players cripled with DRM. They will come out with it sure, but someone will come latter and release a better version not near as gay (Apple maybe?) like the ipod when compared to the ultracool now dead minidisc. Kevin

    • Re:Assinine? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Lisandro ( 799651 )
      Hear, hear. The Minidisc is the prime example of how Sony kills great products because of stupid lock-ins. I recently sold my old & trusty MD player to get a flash based MP3 player just because i couldn't stand converting tracks to ATRAC anymore - complete with propietary software. MDs sounded great, were rugged and played for over 11hs with a single AA battery.
      MP3? Just plug it, mount it, copy files, unmount and done.

      Yes, i know Sony has MP3 based MDs now. Too little too late.

    • Re:Assinine? (Score:5, Funny)

      by nunchux ( 869574 ) on Thursday March 31, 2005 @09:49PM (#12106792)
      someone will come latter and release a better version not near as gay (Apple maybe?)

      Two things come to mind from this post...

      First: In the future, Kevin, I'd suggest using another word in place of "gay." I'm not saying Slashdot posts should adhere to the rules of political correctness or accusing you of homophobia, but it is both juvenile and mildly derogatory to use the word in that matter.

      Second: I can't believe an Apple product is actually being used an example of something "less gay."
  • ... they'll distribute them in UMDs, and you'll need a 128mb Memory Stick with the public key to view the movie, which will only play on a PSP, Playstation or Sony-branded home players.

    PS: Nice logo!

  • meh, mainstream Hollywood (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 31, 2005 @08:53PM (#12106442)
    always 10 years behind the porn industry

  • A good fit (Score:5, Insightful)

    by timeOday ( 582209 ) on Thursday March 31, 2005 @08:53PM (#12106444)
    I doubt movies formatted for the little PSP with it's 480x272 screen would be popular targets for piracy. Especially when the movies are already released as DVD's which are presumably much higher quality and easy to rip.
    • I doubt movies formatted for the little PSP with it's 480x272 screen would be popular targets for piracy.

      You very nearly got it right.

      Correct: they won't be big targets for piracy if the pirate wants to view it on a TV or computer monitors.

      Incorrect: They'll be very popular targets for piracy for anyone who actually has a PSP or anyone who has any other small screen device (iPaq, cell phone, etc) that can show movies. For these purposes, the PSP movies could even be more popular piracy targets becaus

  • Great Idea if they "Get It" (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rokzy ( 687636 ) on Thursday March 31, 2005 @08:54PM (#12106448)
    some quick clues to get you started:

    1. Apple's AACs don't *need* an iPod to work
    2. don't make the download more expensive than just clicking on Amazon next-day delivery
    3. don't only make new films available to download 6 months after general availability

    • Re:Great Idea if they "Get It" (Score:5, Informative)

      by bechthros ( 714240 ) on Thursday March 31, 2005 @09:03PM (#12106516) Homepage Journal
      "Apple's AACs don't *need* an iPod to work"

      That's because AAC is a product of Dolby, Apple just licensed it.
      • I think that's exactly what grandparent was trying to get at. He was suggesting Sony use an open format, instead of some closed format only Sony knows about (ATRAC, anybody?).

        This makes it easier on Sony, because more programs will be able to utilize the files, and users will be happy that their files are more easily moved around. Yes, the files will probably be crippled with DRM, but at least multiple DRM-supporting programs will be able to use it, instead of just Sony's program.
      • But adding their DRM to it made it a proprietary version of AAC. They chose to let iTunes and iPod play it. You'll notice that other players are free to add AAC support (and a few do), but iTunes-bought songs won't work with them.
        • Um, no, they licensed [vialicensing.com] it from Dolby. The DRM is something dolby allowed for in the spec, Apple is one company that does it but so is InterTrust. [musicmatch.com]
    • 2. don't make the download more expensive than just clicking on Amazon next-day delivery

      If they don't make it less than a rental fee, Sony would probably be better off just including a UMD with all of their high-profile DVD releases.
      • If they don't make it less than a rental fee, Sony would probably be better off just including a UMD with all of their high-profile DVD releases.

        If Sony does this, you'll see the UMD formatted movies selling for $1.00 off EBay and Amazon Used.

    • The PSP uses MPEG4 h.264 for video, which Apple and pretty much everybody else uses (except Microsoft with their own format).

      So you won't *need* a PSP to get the movies to work, probably any player with support for the h.264 codec (which is most players).

      Being that you can just download pretty much any movie and play it on the PSP already if you encode it properly the DRM should be no more strict than the iPod. Also, being that the PSP can play MP3s, Sony does seem to show signs that they do "Get it".

      At

  • PSP SP? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Jozer99 ( 693146 ) on Thursday March 31, 2005 @08:55PM (#12106456)
    Maybe eventually they will come out with a more entertainment-centric PSP, with a hard drive for storing movies instead of dinky and expensive Memory Sticks. They did it with that limited edition DVR PS2. On the other hand, Sony has a 10 year history of making very stupid decisions...

  • Now that Sony has a proprietary format, its time to "make available" all that media!

    No thanks. I'll stick to DIVX.
    • er... DivX is proprietary... I don't see anywhere on divx.com the source code available, for free or for purchase... They've got tools that will allow you to encode media with neat features and all, and other tools to allow you to watch it, but the internals are all controlled by DivX labs...

      Which means it's proprietary...

  • The thing is.... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by bechthros ( 714240 ) on Thursday March 31, 2005 @08:58PM (#12106483) Homepage Journal
    ...top 500 movies?! Who gives a rat's ass about their top 500? You can buy those at the store anyway. How about a huge backcatalog of obscure and indy films (kinda like iTunes has a large catalog on non-Britney music)? They might actually get some money from me then.
    • Have you heard about The Long Tail [wired.com]? It's a great article on just how catering to the obscure/cult/indie/less popular tastes is not just a good idea for the improvement of our collective culture, but can also actually be profitable. Still, you won't see any of these megacorps thinking too clearly on the issue for some time yet.

    • Re:The thing is.... (Score:5, Informative)

      by jalefkowit ( 101585 ) <jason@NosPam.jasonlefkowitz.com> on Thursday March 31, 2005 @10:11PM (#12106913) Homepage

      You hit the nail on the head there. Sony's decision to offer the top 500 shows that they really don't understand what makes ITMS so successful at all.

      If there are any Sony folks reading, you should click through and read the following articles immediately:

      Here's the key grafs from the 2nd piece (by Joe Kraus, founder of Excite and now chief of JotSpot [jotspot.com]):

      Let's look at the Amazon example. This graph shows that Amazon sells roughly 2.3M books and that the average Barnes and Noble retail store stocks 139,000 books. So, Amazon stocks roughly 2.2M more books that Barnes and Noble.

      No surprise here. That's the benefit of an online storefront. Massive inventories housed in ultra-low-rent areas that are fronted electronically.

      The astonishing figure is the percent of sales that comes from the "long tail" of books (books that Amazon carries but that Barnes and Noble doesn't).

      57%.

      57% of Amazon's sales come from books you can't even buy at a Barnes and Noble...

      Yep, just like I would imagine a good chunk of ITMS sales come from singles you can't find at your local Sam Goody -- and Kraus cites in the same article that "every iTunes song has been purchased at least once", which would seem to bear that out when you figure that ITMS has an inventory of over a million songs. That's a heck of a long tail business.

      If Sony had a brain they'd be figuring out how to use the PSP as a platform to revitalize their back catalog -- all those movies they've got sitting around that aren't Top 500 material, but which have a few fans here and there. If they can get the distribution system efficient enough the profits would probably be considerable.

  • This could rock, except... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Johnny Mnemonic ( 176043 ) <mdinsmore@@@gmail...com> on Thursday March 31, 2005 @08:58PM (#12106484) Homepage Journal

    • How long will it take to download? Maybe it's a smaller file size, as it's target is a smaller screen. But...
    • Who wants to watch a movie on a 3" screen? Can you hook PSPs to a TV?
    • How much will it cost?
    • Does the PSP even have media that the download will write too? Or will you be expected to dl to a computer, buy a media burner just for the PSP optical media, and then watch it on that?
    Naturally, I didn't RTFA. Maybe Sony thinks folks will spend $20 to buy mini-optical media versions of their movies that only work in the PSP. If that's it, they'll have another think coming.
    • I would think that if you're buying the optical media, it's no longer digitally distributed. Why not just buy the DVD and a portable DVD player, which incidentally are both cheaper, and have much larger screens than the PSP. :-)

    • Re:This could rock, except... (Score:5, Informative)

      by Calroth ( 310516 ) on Thursday March 31, 2005 @09:27PM (#12106671)
      Who wants to watch a movie on a 3" screen?

      Actually, I bet that a lot of people do (or will).

      It's like audio. Back in the day, we had huge hi-fi systems, speakers, amps, the whole lot for the ultimate enjoyment of music. But then the industry brought out a whole bunch of miniature radios and players, culminating in the Sony Walkman (and OK, the iPod) and people found a whole new way to enjoy music: on the move, outside, inside, wherever they felt like it.

      Now substitute "huge hi-fi systems" with "home theatre systems" and "Sony Walkman" with "Sony PSP"...

      One of my friends has a Dell Axim (that's a Pocket PC) with a 640x480 screen, and DivX playing software. It's awesome, you can watch ripped TV shows literally where you like, on the bus, in the park outside, etc. etc., and the quality is brilliant. I could get used to that. (Not that I advocate ripping TV shows.)
      • Yeah, but you are not hurting the quality of the music by making it portable. Music in most all cases is only stereo, so if you buy a good pair of headphones there is no reason you have to take a hit on quality.

        Now I'm not obsessive about the size of my TV. I had a 13" for the longest time, but there is a huge difference between 13" and 3" screen. With headphones it is easy to simulate the "huge hi-fi system" experience portably. There is no similar device to simulate the "home theater system" on the go.
        • Actually there is. Sony makes a glasstron which is really bulky wraparoud goggles that give you the perception of sitting in front of a movie screen. I couldn't see sitting in front of it for a long time. Been out for years.

      • Re:This could rock, except... (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Niten ( 201835 ) on Thursday March 31, 2005 @10:07PM (#12106889)

        I think you make a very good point in your comparison of the PSP to the evolution of portable music systems. However, I find it hard to believe that portable television and movies will ever be as big as the iPod.

        When we listen to music, it is often as an accompaniment to whatever other activity we happen to be engaging in at the time. I often use my iPod while I am reading, going for a run, studying in the library, or working in the lab. (I used it on my bike, too, until an officer pulled me over... but that's another story.) Television and movies, on the other hand, demand the use of both your eyes and ears, and thus your full attention. The utility of portable video as opposed to portable music therefore seems greatly diminished.

        This is not to say I think there is no market for such a device, but - and maybe I am just suffering from a case of tunnel vision here - I doubt that ten years from now we will see as many people that drag portable video players along with them wherever they go, as there are who keep their MP3 players in their side pockets today.

  • Flexibility? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by VeryProfessional ( 805174 )
    I can't see this working unless Sony allow people to burn their movies to DVD. After all, people still want to watch this stuff in their loungeroom. Penetration of media boxes is still low. If the only thing most people (ie not geeks) can do with their DRMed Sony movie is watch it on their PC or their PSP I imagine they will stick with DVDs.
  • What they need to do is take the efficient delivery system that's already in place, and mobilize it with a small fee and "on the fly" encoding in any format desirable. Having access to the master is a flat-fee, and each time you want a new encode, it's another fee. I would pay the price of a movie ticket to download movies I want in high quality. If you won't give money to the companies that make movies happen, and indirectly, the artists and actors behind them, eventually, the shit coming out now will e

  • It will probably be a hardware addon for the psp (Score:5, Insightful)

    by t0qer ( 230538 ) on Thursday March 31, 2005 @09:05PM (#12106534) Homepage Journal
    I've read some comments saying "Oh the PSP screen isn't big enough, memory sticks are too small"

    My guess is that sony will make this as an option for the psp via an addon accessory. Some kind of cartridge connected to a base unit that connects to a hard drive that snaps onto the bottom of the unit.

    It will probably have video out, stereo out via a Y cable plugged into the headphone jack.

    Also folks aren't taking into consideration the modern codecs we have availiable to us these days. As an internet broadcaster, I know just how nice on2's vp6-7 series codecs look at low bittrates. I'm able to push out a full D1 res stream (720x480) at 15 FPS with stereo AAC 64kbps sound(cd quality). Altogether the stream runs at 360kbps, or about a CD for 4 hours of video.

  • How long until a FairPlay clone for Sony's service comes out.

    Personally, I'm betting a month after the initial service release, with an additional 2 weeks every encoding update.

  • Seriously, I wonder... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by dinohum ( 641425 ) on Thursday March 31, 2005 @09:06PM (#12106541)
    How do I make my own UMD disks containing my home movies I shot with super-nifty keeno buttload expensive Sony video camera that I want to show grandma on our long car trip this summer on my cool new PSP? Once I find out how Sony is gonna' help me with this, I'll begin to commence to anticipate contemplating to start taking this seriously.

  • Predictions for next year (Score:5, Insightful)

    by obeythefist ( 719316 ) on Thursday March 31, 2005 @09:07PM (#12106543) Journal
    1) Sony's format won't be DRM free at all, so people will continue to make their own DRM free versions.
    2) Jon will break the DRM about a month after it's available
    3) Sony will sue Jon under DMCA (even though it's not applicable where he lives)
    4) Napster will try to get in on the act
    5) Apple/Sharman/Somebody will sue Sony for patent infringement
    6) Sales will be great but copyright infringement won't take a dent.
    7) Retail sales will take a dent and Sony will blame that on P2P instead of their own better-than-retail sales mechanism.

    Am I missing anything?

  • To be honest.... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by demondawn ( 840015 )
    I think there are far too many problems with this. The first is the size of a movie. Any high quality movie is going to be several gigabytes of data. Even on a truly fast connection, a download of that size takes more than a few hours; that is, more than the time it would take to drive to the store and rent or purchase the movie for oneself. Futhermore, Sony has a history of being much less lax about its DRM advocacy. (Seeing as how, unlike Apple, they are actually involved in the production side of the mov

    • Heh (Score:3, Interesting)

      by News for nerds ( 448130 )
      >I think there are far too many problems with this.
      >The first is the size of a movie. Any high quality
      >movie is going to be several gigabytes of data.
      >Even on a truly fast connection, a download of that
      >size takes more than a few hours;

      Do you know what the "streaming" technology is?
      • How did you end up living in a world where DVD's mpeg 2 and Atrac-3 was cutting edge? That's stuff's garbage.

        Innovation while you've been in a cave. Avi, RM, Divx 3, 3.11, 5.01, XViD, mkv,VP6, and now the new Nero Format which is just hitting the streets.

        It's a brave new world!
    • Any high quality movie is going to be several gigabytes of data.

      No it won't. A two hour show/movie encoded in DivX is around 650-700 meg, 640x480 resolution, which is twice the resolution needed on the PSP. 320x240 is really all you need for good quality on that size screen. Hell, broadcast streams are 640x480 (unless they're high-definition, of course). .

  • I see failure in Sony's future (Score:3, Insightful)

    by natrius ( 642724 ) * <.niran. .at. .niran.org.> on Thursday March 31, 2005 @09:10PM (#12106565) Homepage
    There is no way this venture can be as successful as iPods and iTMS. Far fewer people want mobile video than mobile audio. If this weren't the case, those portable DVD players would have been as much of a must have item as portable CD players were. The demand just isn't there.

    If they take the focus off of mobile devices, then they might have something. The demand for watching videos in the home has been present for a long time, and anything that makes that easier and cheaper will be successful. The potential road blocksare insufficient broadband penetration and meager broadband speeds where it is present. Once you can download movies in an hour at DVD quality, everyone will want this.

  • How out of character... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by terraformer ( 617565 ) <tpb@pervici.com> on Thursday March 31, 2005 @09:10PM (#12106566) Journal
    ...of Sony to want to be out on front of the business model and not just the tech. ie; Betamax, Memory Stick based MP3 players that require conversion to Sony's proprietary format, etc; I pretty much expect to see some gotcha, catch, whatever that will destroy any chance of Sony sucessfully attaining market leader status. Sony is a great technology firm with beyond solid quality mfging and design but they always some how screw up the bidness side of things.

  • UMD could be a success (Score:4, Insightful)

    by rsborg ( 111459 ) on Thursday March 31, 2005 @09:12PM (#12106575) Homepage
    The Universaly Media Disk could be a success:
    1. if they are available as UMD-Rs (they could lock down the PSP to make the media open but the player closed/DRMed... to keep their medai wing happy)
    2. if they price them right (both pre-loaded UMDs and UMD-Rs)
    I see that a lot of people saw what Apple did, and are trying their own entry into the digital media market. I wonder how these will pan out. Note however, noone is taking on Apple. They pretty much see no cash in the business... thus, they move on to the "next iPod possibility" aka Video. I wonder what Steve Jobs would say to those [hbs.edu] who make possibly flawed assumptions (ie, does "audio market" == "video market">) :-)

    • Re:UMD could be a success (Score:2, Interesting)

      by mlk ( 18543 )
      I was talking to a guy from Sony a little while a go at an IGDA event. As I understand it, not even PSP developers are getting hold on UMD writers, instead each game gets shipped on to Sony. Nice way to keep the royalitys in check I guess.

      User content goes on to memory sticks, limiting a film to 1gig.

  • Competing with Blockbuster / NetFlix (Score:3, Insightful)

    by One Div Zero ( 851169 ) on Thursday March 31, 2005 @09:21PM (#12106640)
    The only way it'll ever gain significant market share is if it competes with the home DVD renting.

    This means fighting Blockbuster and NetFlix on their home turf.

    The only solution? Undercut Blockbuster and NetFlix on price for a SUBSCRIPTION service that allows you to pay monthly, not by # of movies.

    Good luck to Sony on coming up with a DRM scheme that can ensure you only have 3 movies out, ala the way physical media can be tracked.

    Isn't that the dream of DRM after all? Find a way to make digital media work just like proprietary real objects?
  • Forget PSP. Release your '500 movies' to PC owners.

    If I could spend $20 to buy say Revenge of the Sith when it gets released, download an encrypted DVD image via an internal Bittorrent service controlled by the studio (to save it bandwidth costs), use a program developed by the studio to burn the encrypted DVD image (saving it packaging, distribution and middleman costs) and watch it at home, why not? Is that a bad thing?

  • An interesting idea, but one main flaw (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Dark Paladin ( 116525 ) * <jhummel&johnhummel,net> on Thursday March 31, 2005 @09:37PM (#12106733) Homepage
    I've been playing with my own PSP for about a day now, and after spending another $80 for a 512 MB stick, I'm in the process of converting my unwatched episode of Battlestar Gallactica so I can watch it on the plane tomorrow. (Today Battlestar - tomorrow some anime ;) ).

    One thing that the iTunes Music Store (iTMS) did right is how they went to *all* of the major labels before launch and got them onboard. Sony's online music service, I believe, has at least Sony music. Their online movie system? Sony movies. Microsoft has MSN and - other stuff.

    When I see a iTunes Movie Store (and it doesn't have to be from Apple, really - I don't give a crap) that offers a good line of major studios (Disney, Miramax, Fox) as well as some independants (there are some documentaries that would go great with this system), let me burn it to a DVD to watch on my television or convert to a format I like (such as the PSP MPEG-4 format - then again, if I can burn my own DVD at least I could rerip it for the PSP if I feel up to it :) ), then you'll have a winner.

    So far, though, most of the iTMS-like movie stores are kind of half assed about it. I'm sure that Jobs is working in the backgrounds, but knowing the movie studios and all of the copyright/union issues to deal with (like how do you pay people for the online version of a movie compared to the DVD version per sale, and so on), I believe it will take at least another 4-5 years. Not for the technology, but for the law to catch up and studios to listen to thier pocketbooks and not their lawyers.

    Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong.
  • To any movie execs hanging out here: Make your catalog available WITHOUT DRM, preferably in divx format for less money than a movie rental. Why is this so hard to figure out? Are you guys that bloody greedy? The movie industry said rentals were going to kill the industry. Now they make more off rentals than the theatres. Somebody get a clue.

    I have bandwidth and computers. They're connected to my entertainment centre. I rip or encode my movies to divx and put them on a server. That way I can que a few up fo

  • I surely wont pay for movies I can only watch on my PSP. Get it to DVD or stream it over my home network to some device to get it into my TV for viewing.
  • I love watching movies while jogging. I also love watching them while driving and walking and studying.

  • did they ever heard of BitTorrent? (Score:5, Funny)

    by RicardoStaudt ( 848723 ) on Thursday March 31, 2005 @09:56PM (#12106842)
    "iTunes for Movies"... hmm... ins't that what BitTorrent is for?

  • PSP is too large to carry around (Score:3, Interesting)

    by green pizza ( 159161 ) on Thursday March 31, 2005 @10:08PM (#12106894) Homepage
    I don't really care about the size of the screen, I would just plug the movie player gizmo into the nearest TV or monitor anyway.

    What I care about is the physical size of the gizmo itself!

    I would much rather carry around an iPod than a PSP!

  • Tricky at best. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by DwarfGoanna ( 447841 ) on Thursday March 31, 2005 @10:13PM (#12106932)
    Here is the problem with having too many pots cooking. As many people have said in related (iPod Video) threads, music is a background thing you have going while you do x, while watching video is something you *do*. Now, the only market segment this portable video model can really work with is children and public transit commuters. People who use a passive mode of transportation. But the PSP is well outside of "buy it and shut the kids up" pricing. This could have worked really really well for them with kids movies, but how many kids will get a PSP for good grades or whatever? Sony seems to be trying to straddle the success of Apple and Nintendo here, and a whack in the nuts is a quite possible outcome.
  • According to tonight's episode, the PSP was actually created as an instrument of god. Therefore, god must intend for us to be able to download movies.

  • a comparison (Score:4, Informative)

    by CySurflex ( 564206 ) on Thursday March 31, 2005 @11:37PM (#12107475)
    I have been trying out different movie download services - so here are some impressions:

    • It's definitely the future. It's so much easier to click and download a movie you want to watch instead of going to the store and renting it. And it has a significant advantage over Netflix in that you don't have to plan in advance, you get instant gratification. I decide I want to watch Troy - I log in to my computer, pay the fee and can be watching it 2 minutes later as it starts downloading

    • Movielink [movielink.com] is the venture put forth by a bunch of big movie studios. As such it has the latest movies which is good. However, it is expensive ($4.99 for 24 hour watching period!). It is also very restrictive DRM wise - you only have 24 hours, and you can only watch it on the computer you downloaded. The plus side is that they have all the latest movies

    • Starz Ticket on Real Movies [real.com] - this one is cool because for a flat fee ($12.95/month I think) you can watch all the movies you want. A drawback is that they have a very limited set of movies (300 movies I think), most of them you never heard of, or heard of and never wanted to watch, and a lot of very, very old movies. BUT, besides that, the service is pretty cool - you can activate up to 3 computers, so you can download to one computer and view it on another. And you can view and download as many movies as you want. They rotate through different movies and always have about 300 or so in the library, so if they rotate "out" a movie you were watching, you can't finish watching it. But I do like this service, because unlike Movie Link you're not limited to 24 hours

    • Digital Cable / VOD / On Demand - I have Adelphia Digital Cable, and they seem to have a large library of movies "on demand". The convenience factor is great - it's already on your TV, you don't have to plug your computer into your TV to use this. Drawback is steep price - like MovieLink its $4.95 for 24 hours of viewing time. They do let you view the movie from any digital cable box in your home, so thats a little flexibility right there. And you can obviously record it to your TiVo and watch it beyond the 24 hour period. They have a lot of new movies, I'm watching Shrek 2 using this right now.

      If someone managed to combine the Starz Ticket pricing and DRM model with the movie collection of the others, that would be close to a winner.

      After having been a Netflix subscriber for 5 years, I realized that this is really the future, once people start getting it. (The vendors AND the consumers need to get it)

  • What Sony ISN'T Telling You (Score:4, Funny)

    by piecewise ( 169377 ) on Thursday March 31, 2005 @11:47PM (#12107522) Journal
    The top 500 movies will be available to purchase via the Internet...

    But they're all Betamax!

  • The Danish are already doing it (Score:3, Interesting)

    by donely ( 570579 ) on Friday April 01, 2005 @01:14AM (#12108018) Homepage
    starting this coming monday, danish TV station, TV2, will announce 250movies for download on their widely successful www.sputnik.dk TV2 station. Prices pr movie will likely be around $6, which is what is costs to rent a movie in Blockbuster here. They will add 250 movies each year until 2010 (obviously, this will likely change, but that is what they're currently saying). The movies will be streamed in in WMV format.

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