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Wired: Sony Prototyping Personal Video Player

Posted by timothy on from the all-the-cool-kids dept.

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."

3 of 150 comments (clear)

  1. Legality of content? by BizidyDizidy · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.
  2. Add on to TiVo / etc by hattig · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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.

  3. Perfect Match for PSX??? by apetime · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Does anyone else see this as an obvious tie-in to the PSX? Given the hard drive recording and dvd playback features on the psx, as well as IIRC firewire and memory stick ports, Sony has a great chance to tie these two products together.

    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.