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Wired: Sony Prototyping Personal Video Player
Cinematique writes "Wired is running an article about Apple beating Sony in the personal music player fight. The author suggest that Sony should skip its planned answer to the iPod and focus instead on a portable video player. But there's a catch: the legality of the content such video players would use."
This is exactly what I've needed for YEARS!
Finally, something that I can watch movies on during those long, boring rides in the car, or on the plane, or during class when I should be taking notes!
This is truly the end all of my personal video needs.
If only there was some device like this already on the market, one that I could play games on and send email and program on, too.
Oh well. I'll have to stick to my TV for watching things and this wonderful little LapTop for the rest.
Edward@Tomato - /home/Edward/ man woman
man: no entry for woman in the manual.
"Qua!?"
I don't see as how this should be a problem.
First, if you own a DVD, you should be able to "rip" it to one of these players as fair use. This would probably often be a useful feature.
Even cooler would be if the future of DVRs would be to download content to such players, just like a computer to an IPOD. Being able to "TiVo" shows and watch them whenever you want would be quite a nice feature.
Is there any "copyright" issues with using TV shows like this? How could it be any different from using a DVR in the first place.
The safest way to approach lava is to have another person with you and he goes first.
I'm sure it'll do just as well as portable DVD players. Who are they kidding comparing something like that to an iPod?
I've always thought of video and audio as two completely different classes of product. Sure, the people who buy one buy the other, but CE companies always seem to ignore the fact that we actually use music completely differently from audio. The technology may be similar, but to assume that adding video to an ipod will make a better product just because it does more is quite ridiculous.
"But there's a catch: the legality of the content such video players would use."
That was never a 'catch' when it came to the iPod.
What I want is a portable device that I can plug into my TV, like a VCR, and record shows to watch later when I'm on the train. A portable TIVO of sorts. Any takers please?
why can i see this thing only playing sony titles only?
We played dungeons and dragons for 3 hours.....then i was slain by an elf
You could have porn on the go! Nothing like watching porn while walking around town. When can I get one of these?
There's a rumor that Apple might introduce a device next week which would allow the iPod to be hooked up to a TV for video playback. A lot of people have speculated that the iPod was never supposed to be just about music ("pod" suggests something more general), so this wouldn't be too much of a surprise. A built-in color screen would be the next step, I guess.
This space unintentionally left unblank.
I'm not reading the article - I've given up on wired entirely - but that doesn't matter. There will necessarily be a gulf in price between a device which plays mp3s, and a device which plays video. The needs for storage, a fancy display, and additional processing (either in the form of a dedicated video decompressing engine in hardware, or a generally more powerful CPU) pretty much guarantee that a video player is going to cost more money.
Meanwhile Apple is taking pretty much all the money for a large-capacity portable mp3 player, and Sony would like a bite of it for obvious reasons. They own all the technologies they'll need to implement it, so they need not license anything to do so - the only costs are for development and production. Sony is known to be able to churn out hardware at very low costs, so this should be a doddle for them.
Let's also not forget that Sony is bringing out their new somewhat-PS2-based handheld, the PSP, in the not so far future. Since they already have a handheld video player coming, they might as well toss off the mp3 player right now, and work on video later.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
More interestingly, would be if Sony took the same approach. An online store where I could download quality video content, especially TV shows, for a reasonable price would be interesting indeed.
The safest way to approach lava is to have another person with you and he goes first.
Plug this into the Network / Firewire / USB2 port on a TiVo (or future TiVo) and then download the videos that you have recorded on the TiVo onto your device (recoding for the devices display size of course, why store a 720x480 MPEG2 when a 320x240 MPEG4 would be better, and allow more to fit on the device?) for watching.
As TiVo, etc, appear to be fine legally, this logical extension would be. Watch that Family Guy/Simpons/film on the train to work instead of at home where the wife will bitch because she wants to watch tennis.
I'm not sure I really see the validity of carrying movies and TV shows around with me. With music its different - I can listen to music while driving, while coding, while jogging, etc. I just don't see the same appeal for video. While it would be a very useful device for those long plane rides when you're unfortunate enough to not be travelling on JetBlue or to calm a child on a road trip (and you already have a larger screen for them to watch) - I just don't see video being a big a draw.
:)
Listening to music is just a much more passive activity than actually watching a movie. I simply see fewer instances where I'd want to use it AND I wouldn't want a more compelling experience from a gameboy or cellphone games. Maybe its just me - but by the time this market develops - I would expect that 4G phones would be able to deliver all the video I need right to me
Audio CDs are not protected, it is legal to transfer them to other media.
Technically, it is illegal to rip a DVD since you are circumventing a copy protection system.
There is a difference.
But cassette tape players, VCR's, etc. have been made for years, and the responsibility for legal content on these devices has been squarely on the user. I know the music industry had tried to squelch them, just like everything else, but as long as there is a significant use other than piracy (and there is) then the {RI,MP}AA can go fly.
They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
What questions of legality apply to a personal video player that don't apply to my Ipod they could play equally legal and illegal content although it is harder to copy legitimate video to your hard drive with the right hardware it is still fairly simple Sony definetly does need to stick the the personal vidoe market Apple is making a major takeover in the audio market
Sony stick to what you started with
If someone could post a good link to a discussion of this legality, I'd be very appreciative. Also, I still think this would be a great device if just for the TiVo application.
The safest way to approach lava is to have another person with you and he goes first.
It implies Sony has a PVP, when it does not. It's a writer suggesting that they skip ahead to it.
If you don't mind spending about $600, you can have 20Gb worth of audio/video/photo fun... Archos AV320 Video Recorder [archos.com] Sorry, no e-mail or games yet.
The last two are important. The iPod and the Apple store are not encumbered with excessive DRM. Sony, targeting a product for the windows market, is probably looking to develop some sort of DRM protected pay-per-view movie download library. I can easily imagine them using Windows Media Player to come up with all sorts of complicated schemes to limit the use of the movies once they are on the player.
And five movies isn't really all that significant for many uses of this device. If one is traveling, it is not uncommon to take two to four times that many movies. This is easy to do with DVDs and a portable player. With this player on would have to have a laptop to hold the extra movies, and then why not just us a laptop.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Wasn't there also speculation that they might roll out an upgrade to iTMS in conjuction with the Windows release? What if this was an iTVS (Video Store)? I would be VERY interested in the ability to buy quality video content in this format, ESPECIALLY TV shows.
The safest way to approach lava is to have another person with you and he goes first.
"...But there's a catch: the legality of the content such video players would use..."
Since when has the legality of the content not been an issue with portable audio players as well?
Yes, a laptop is a viable use for this, same with music. A more portable, specialized device probably also has a market, especially if content provider services are rolled out with it.
The safest way to approach lava is to have another person with you and he goes first.
that too will fail massively. Dommage!
forget hooking it up to tivo. follow the mp3 player style and let us download mpeg/wmp/mov/rm/etc onto it. businessmen will want it for trips, students will want it for the bus(and class), everyone will want it for porn... needless to say, if you build it we will come. (pun intended :)
If I recall correctly when Diamond Multimedia introduced their Rio MP3 Player, the RIAA sued them to stop sales. Then they dropped the suit in 1999(?). Anyways, I am pretty sure legality was an issue for the portable MP3 player, but dropping the suit was just telling people it's ok to produce them. I'm sure if Sony produced a device similar to the one mentioned in the article, the MPAA would probably and try and sue especially if you could 'rip' DVDs.
It's legal for me to rip my CD's because there's no encryption, and I have rights to change formats for media I own. But, with DVD's, there is encryption, and breaking that is a violatation of the DMCA. I can't rip 99.999% of DVD's legally.
Giant corporations have lots of reserve cash and are able to leverage it in all kinds of ways. Unfortuately this also makes them slow. From the article:
Sony was so worried about piracy, and sapping revenue from its Sony Music division, that it chose to do nothing and let Apple ascend. Apple made boatloads of cash from the iPod, while Sony struggled to remain profitable as revenues from its main cash cow, the PlayStation 2, plummeted.
Sony lost out because it is trying to do too many things - trying to be many things to many markets. It is things like this that make me wonder if the megacorps can really survive by buying up all the little guys. Most sucessful companies focus on only one goal. Microsoft focused on getting the desktop - and they got it. Now though, Microsoft is headed in many directons (not nearly so much as Sony) is it possible that this lack of focus will push Microsoft aside? I suspect so (in the long run that is.)
Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
Putting the Move Back in Movies
A personal video player puts films in the palm of your hand for US $99
By Steven M. Cherry
Bumper-to-bumper traffic stretches ahead for miles. You're hot, tired, and the kids are fidgeting in the back seat. They're too young for Game Boys. You used to long for one of the big expensive DVD players mounted below the roof. But now you reach into your purse for the ZVUE, a US $99 handheld video player.
About the same size and shape as a Game Boy, the ZVUE has the added advantage that, unlike a DVD player, a child--or you--can carry it around and watch it on a long airplane ride or in a doctor's waiting room.
Yes, the ZVUE player's movie screen is very small, but then size didn't keep Nintendo's Game Boy and its ilk from becoming hugely popular among the same 8- to 18-year-old set at which this device is aimed. The ZVUE plays movies, television shows, and music videos with a clarity that will surprise adults and captivate the youngsters.
From HandHeld Entertainment Inc. (San Francisco), the ZVUE relies on a 2.5-inch (diagonal) thin-film-transistor liquid-crystal display and stores its programs on a Secure Digital Multimedia card already popular for handheld consumer electronics, including digital cameras. These so-called SD cards come with capacities of 8 to 256 MB--at roughly one minute per megabyte, the largest cards can hold two full two-hour movies each.
A major part of the ZVUE development involved a proprietary encoding scheme, which HandHeld Entertainment calls its HHe codec, that fiercely compresses programs at a 100 to 1 ratio. Nonetheless, the ZVUE plays video with none of the jerkiness (using only a few frames per second) or fuzziness (using just a small number of pixels per frame) one might expect.
None of those usual problems could be seen when I watched Toy Story 2 on a preproduction demo unit that company CEO Nathan Schulhof brought to the IEEE Spectrum office in mid-August. The 24-bit color picture, the same as on a conventional computer color display, was crisp, and the figures moved as smoothly as in the best video games. A 128-MB SD card, holding a two-hour movie, costs about $50.
A proprietary codec can be the kiss of death for something like a media player. Sales of the player start out small, so few film distributors encode their movies for it. With only a few movies available, device sales languish and the cycle continues. Aware of this chicken-and-egg problem, Schulhof is licensing his codec to other manufacturers. With more versions of ZVUE out there, more movies should be available for them.
Additionally, for those who already have movies languishing on their hard drives in the MPEG-4 format, HandHeld will soon release a software package for converting these files into a form compatible with its codec. (Note to Schulhof: a conversion from DivX would be nice, too.) Burn the result onto an SD card via the device's USB connection and your kids will have another movie for the ZVUE.
The 75-gram unit plays for up to eight hours on four AA batteries and has a slot for the SD card. The device comes with only one set of headphones but a port for a second pair, so both of the little tykes in the back seat can share sound as well as pictures without your having to listen to Shrek for the hundredth time. First units are expected to show up in Toys "R" Us stores in the United States this month, in time for the end-of-year holiday season.
ZVUE is being manufactured in Hong Kong by Eastern Asia Technology
I'm just wondering by what system the new hardware will be powered. Considering Sony's move towards Linux in development of new PS, it's natural to think Linux would be their choice. But they might develop some system of their own...? There are a number of portable DVD player with 7" LCD screen already available in the market. Swapping DVD drive with HD shouldn't be that hard.
You mean like a laptop?
There is an unstated yet understood requirement in the discussion of battery-powered media devices other than notebook or tablet PCs. The constraint is that the device should be designed to let the owner stuff the device in his pants pocket. Anything bigger than the original green-screen Game Boy won't do.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Audio CDs are not protected, it is legal to transfer them to other media. Technically, it is illegal to rip a DVD
there is no difference. did you know that the shift key is now a banned circumvention tool and anybody caught pointing to it will be found in violation of the dmca/
Will I retire or break 10K?
Anyway, a 320x240 video is not going to turn anyone on these days.
Oh really? It's not the size of the image that counts.
Will I retire or break 10K?
"It implies Sony has a PVP, when it does not. It's a writer suggesting that they skip ahead to it."
According to the story: "... It looks like they just might do that. A few weeks ago, a prototype of a Sony PVP turned up at the WPC Expo trade show in Tokyo."
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
It's legal for me to rip my CD's because there's no encryption
didn't you know that using the shift key is a felony/
Will I retire or break 10K?
...why do you think they push the atrac3 standard so hard? It's because they are a major record company too! I doubt if they would want to increase competition in the mp3 player market without requiring the proprietary atrac3, and anyone with enough music to fill up an ipod certainly isn't using legal music...
Maybe I'm missing something here, but haven't Sony already announced that the forthcoming PlayStation Portable will be able to play video provided on UMDs?
++ Say to Elrond "Hello.".
Elrond says "No.". Elrond gives you some lunch.
watching football on my 2" TV! Me and the guys all huddle around the TV...
Maybe in America iPod is king, but in Japan, it's just another one of those cute things Apple makes but no one wants. In Japan, MD is king. In Japan, you can go to Tsutaya (kind of like block buster, but doesn't suck) and rent a CD... Yea, and it get's even better; you can LEGALLY COPY IT TO MD. You can't even play them in computers. Everyone has a MD Player. I tell friends I'll send them an MP3 in the email of this artist or whatever if they don't know who I'm talking about, and they have no idea what an MP3 is.
This isn't just Japan too, this is pretty much all of Europe too. It's huge in Taiwan. It's huge in Mainland China. (I know this because I go to college in an international school in Japan, so I have class mates from all over the world.) MD is king I think.
Now you may say, other companies make MD's and MD Players... yea they do... but... at least in Japan, no body buys them. In Europe they buy Aiwa and stuff, but since Sony owns everything about MD, they still get money from other companies.
Sure, MD may not be doing well in America, but America isn't the only country in the world.
1) Ty is right - this would be more useful if it were a TIVO like device. One of the fundamental differences between audio and video content is that while people will listen to a song dozens of times before they get tired of it (and even then probably want to listen to it later), a movie is best watched one, maybe two times at the most (unless you're some sort of sweaty-toothed freak). Fresh content is needed, and TIVO delivers. Video-On-Demand content is the other natural complement. There is the slight problem about putting a hard drive through transfering gigabyte-ranges of data per day. Regardless, neither I nor most people I can think of really have the time/attention to watch video on the go, nor the desire to watch it on such a tiny screen, so what's the point?
2) Missed the boat on an iPod knockoff? Are they on crack? The iPod is not a complicated or exclusive device. Sony could easily make something that compared favorably and people would buy it. Especially if it were cheaper, although it's unlikely they could do that since the bulk of the cost for any personal audio device is the drive.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
Read a book.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
It would eliminate worries about piracy for Sony, because it would be a simple matter to tie one Sony PVP to a PSX, like Apple does with iPods and Macs, letting Sony control both sides of the transaction effectively. Since most people can't record directly to digital format yet, the PSX has a good chance at being a hit. Tied together with a really cool looking TV (if what Wired is saying is right), you might have people buying PSXs, like people were buying Macs to use iPods a few years ago.
My eyesight is bad enough staring at 17" CRTs and 15" LCDs all day, now Wired wants me to watch movies on a 3.5" display?
Sheesh, at that size, no one will be able to tell IF Han shoots first.
Vincent J. Murphy
Spandex Justice
I know it won't be simple and elegant with style like the iPod, I can see it now, alot of useless buttons on the side, three or four different colours of plastic, a brand name, a company name, a weird logo, and a bunch of clutter on the device in different fonts/etc. They will find a way to make it all stupid and "cool" like cellphones, just like when I saw this oriental girl with a cellphone with a round screen, hello kitty background, and a bunch of other crap. If it is from sony it just won't be the same, as the simple, yet elegant iPod.
Sig: I stole this sig.
The web contains an ocean of interesting video content, its just poorly organized. The Irate project for audio shows a way to harvest legal music content, the same can/will be done for video. I run a site that aggregates links to interesting video around the 'net.
With the BBC putting their archives online and the archive.org saying they will provide infinite storage and bandwidth for multimedia content, legal content for these devices is no problem.
WIPO Troll is back. That's right. And we're gonna bury you in faeces!
I'm 99.99% sure there'll be a lot of accidents when people hooked up to these things try to do PVP-incompatible actions like driving, crossing streets, walking, etc.
Agreed. A portable video device always struck me as a device that would be created by a company only because they can, not because they should.
I absolutely cannot fathom why anybody would want an expensive device to watch video in a postage stamp size. Also, a hard drive (random access media) is a complete waste for linear video data, and expensive too. Not to mention the limited battery life on something like this, unless an extremely expensive battery is used. I believe that these video players will appeal to the "gadget" crowd and nobody else.
I've had my Sony Video Walkman for 3 years. It's about the size of a Tom Clancy novel on steroids, and plays miniDV tapes. Has firewire, S-video, and composite in/out (though not at the same time). Works well for a DV editing deck and so-so for watching movies on airplanes. If I hook it up to a Macrovision altered feed it goes "beep beep beep" and refuses to record.
Take out the cassette bay, shove in a dense HD and you've got a product I'm interested in buying.
Although with the iPod getting larger everyday, I don't see why you shouldn't be able to DL a movie to it. I mean I have LOTR TTT on my HDD and it takes up about 1.2GB compressed in DivX and all. Hell that would fit on my 5GB iPod.
I use the iPOD for more than just music. My 250 song collection leaves plenty of room so spare, so I often carry back ups of my powerpoint and other files in there as well.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
This is absolutely ridiculous. There are millions of things Sony could do to beat the iPod.
On of the reasons I look at Sony products first, is because they get incredible battery life out of all of their products. What's the point of hundreds of hours of music, if you need to carry stacks and stacks of AA batteries, and swap them every 2 hours?
Then there is capacity, price, formats (I'm still looking for a good player with Vorbis support... Spex support would be very good too.)
However, don't exepct much from Sony. If you've looked at the products they've made in the past few decades, you can see that they are fully in-bed with media companies, and include all the DRM they can.
DATs were killed off due to DRM. MiniDiscs are just hanging on right now, because of DRM. You aren't allowed to make many copies of your own music, and they do everything they can to prevent you even having digital output at all. You can copy from your computer to your minidisc, but you can't copy the files back. They are going out of their way to give you a product with restrictions you don't want. With hundreds of products just like this, I can't imagine they are going to see the light, and throw out all restrictions immediately.
The big problem is that all electronics makers are in-bed with DRM of all types, which is the sole reason why computers are doing so well. Instead of doing the same things with stand-alone electronics, we have to do it with a general-purpose processor, because no sector other than the computer industry is willing to give you permission to access your own property how ever you want.
Apple is only partly in-bed with restrictions against the public, so they made a device that was far better than anything the electronics industry would ever think of comming out with.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
If i was going to make a device with a screen, a harddrive, a cpu, and specialised video decompression, you may as well make it some sort of pda-with-harddrive dealie, instead of just specialising in media playing.
Good for them.
How this could happen. Being able to carry only a couple of songs around with you on a mechanical medium is not a big advantage.
MD unites the worst aspects of solid-state and HD based MP3 players. I guess the Japanese consumer are naive in some ways.
I doubt you are entirely correct about Europe, I know few people who own MD players in my neck of the woods.
Could this be the return of the Video Watchman? It'd have to have the following features: a tuner, at least a 3.5" screen, output to a larger TV, accept UMD compatible media. I don't see what the RIAA/MPAA's problem with this thing is either. Sony seems to be afraid of the 'big bad wolf' here and if they don't get started on this project, Apple is sure to do something similar to this, think iVision.
I've been eyeing devices like these off and on for the past several months or so. If I were to travel more than I do, one of these devices would be invaluable. I don't generally watch much broadcast TV. Before I graduated from school and when I still lived with my parents, I found that more often than not I would watch shows that I had previously recorded on their PVR. I find that I generally manage to stay busy enough that I don't find the time to watch television shows when they are broadcast anyway. Other than the Simpsons and the occasional sporting event, that is. (Go Cubs!)
Furthermore, when my roommate and I moved into our new apartment after graduation, we elected not to purchase anything but the most basic cable needed to get cable internet. Instead, I get my TV fix buy purchasing DVD collections for series that I never found the time to watch while being broadcast or series which we never broadcast in my area, recording shows onto my computer from the few channels I do get, and being sent the occasional television episode for a particular series from a friend who recorded it on their computer. (That does fall into fair use, correct?) Just as I have all but stopped listening to the radio and watching MTV (when I still had it), I have now all but stopped watching television. Instead, my entertainment fill is based around on-demand entertainment. I watch shows whenever I get the chance and listen to my CDs whenever I get a chance. For me, being able to take my ondemand video entertainment with me is simply the next step. I would love to be able to rip a couple episodes of The Prisoner or Buffy to take with me and watch while on a trip or during a lunch break at work, or pretty much any time I have some free time away from home that I want to fill. As I said before, if I travelled more, I would most certainly be purchasing one of these devices.
If Murphy's Law can go wrong, it will.
... then they should make video for the PVP available for sale. Otherwise, people are going to turn to P2P etc to get stuff. I wish these guys would show some sense. You don't create demand and then not fill it. Apple knew this, hence, iTunes.
"Derp de derp."
Hey, can you remind Tera to pick up some more anal lube? She was out of it last night, so I had to give her a vegetable-oil enema before I pounded her pooper.
He didn't even read the whole comment!
"If only there was some device like this already on the market, one that I could play games on and send email and program on, too."
You mean like a laptop?
Hey, Elrod, you must have missed this part of the comment that you "replied" to!
Oh well. I'll have to stick to my TV for watching things and this wonderful little LapTop for the rest.
Archos AV320p
p
p
http://www.ehomeupgrade.com/archives/article57.ph
RCA Lyra Audio/Video 20 GB Jukebox
http://www.ehomeupgrade.com/archives/article76.ph
Avias MEC Station DELUXE
http://www.ehomeupgrade.com/archives/article59.ph
If you want a portable video player, just grab a recent Pocket PC and install PocketMVP
http://blogs.lns.kicks-ass.net/moonjihad/
http://www.archos.com/
It's been around,
For a while.
The Archos AV300 lets you record video directly. It's exactly what you're looking for.
It's not not cheap. But the quality of the screen and audio and video playback is excellent.
What's wrong with viewing pr0n on a portable video player?
I went to Fry's in Seattle today.
They had at least three MPEG4 players for bargain basement prices.
What's the deal? Or is it just because it's Sony?
Coming soon - pyrogyra
comeon
1. if your a student, record all lectures on a handycam to DV tape, then you can fall asleep
2. convert/copy to the video pod and watch later and fast forward the boring bits.
3. watch jayleno at school.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
I think it would do well in London, for instance, where people can spend more than an hour a day on the tube, but not so well in the US - where people are (hopefully) paying attention to the road when they're communting :)
stay frosty and alert
The first four results from google for psp sony were junk!
I haven't seen anyone mention the Archos AV320 Mediabox.
It has a 3.8" screen, plays MPEG4, MP3's, and records from any video source (encodes into MPEG4), including NTSC and PAL video.
can a movie be uploaded into an iPod? If so, that would cancel out any argument to concern exclusively on video players as a movie piracy device. I remember a japanese company tried marketing an mp3 player earlier, and failed because they were blocked by american courts. then when american companies caught up, absolute silence by the courts. is this american protectionism in action?
Pocket. Porn.
Enough said.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
What about all these Gigabytes (Gigibytes?) of uh... "home videos" everyone is supposed to have?
Anyway, after a couple of hours of general catch-up chat we moved onto technology. We're both Mac users, so that was the way the conversation went. He mentioned that he'd been at a wedding reception with some guy from Sony, who told him about Sony's portable video player, and then started talking about working with Apple on hardware - until he realised the champagne had opened his mouth too much and promptly shut up.
Could all be bollocks, of course, but I can't imagine why my friend would make it up. It could have just been something to do with QuickTime, as well. But it'd be interesting if there were something in the hardware story, though!
You must think in Russian.
First off, there are plenty of portable DVD players on the market.
Second, why would Sony and the MPAA do anything that might push down DVD sales? Hollywood is awash with DVD profits. Offering portable hard drives for motion-picture viewing is a direct threat to DVD sales. Hollywood won't allow this trend to happen like MP3 trading did to the music industry. Currently, the distribution channel for legal motion-picture digital sales is primitive, so a device like this would only encourage P2P movie trading.
Put these elements together and you'll see why Sony WON'T bring such a device out.
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
Once upon a time, there were these interesting places you would actually travel to, and you would pull out your wallet, and hand over green paper things and enter into a business transaction, and leave with an object(or ten) containing the 'music' you legally aquired...
It was really neat back then -- sure there was more music worth buying -- but many of us actually supported the musicians whose music we enjoyed, and by that I mean there are many people over 25 who have actual CD collections(mine is well over 500 CDs) not to mention those of us who have 'L.P.s'...ask your parents -- it was a device used for rolling joints
We apologise for the fault in this post. Those responsible have been sacked. -- Signed RICHARD M. NIXON
focus instead on a portable video player.
I've already got one. It's called the Sony VAIO laptop.
First, the potential customers aren't likely to care.
Second, does anybody remember their history? The first hardware MP3 player (Diamond) was sued like hell, and won. Why should this be any different?
Is there a market for PVPs when even the cheapest laptops can play movies? I'd much rather buy a low-end laptop if I wanted the ability to play movies on the go (which I never have wanted, btw) than blow a bunch of cash on a machine that can only play movies. IMO, there is a very limited market for this.
--Rick "If it isn't broken, take it apart and find out why."
sony already makes it. Vaio desktops with the 'gigapocket' allow recording TV to the hard drive (and to DVD) and the video recording includes a 'convert to clie' software snip that lets you watch prerecorded programs on your clie.
Buy a Vaio with gigapocket, buy a highend Clie, and you can have exactly what you want- stock software
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random