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Sony to Make an "iTunes for Movies"
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."
Not with the expensive memory stick duos or w/o a umd burner it won't.
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....
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
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.
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
If Sony locks their movies down as tight as possible, this service will be dead before it hits the water.
An effective signature identifies a particular user amongst a base of thousands.
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...
...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.
They will never stop until somebody makes the
- 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.--
$tar -xvf
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.
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.
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?
I am government man, come from the government. The government has sent me. -- G.I.R.
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 movie industry, this is not suprising.) Sony isn't planning on making the UMD a home-burnable format for that very reason; if you want to carry around 3 movies, you'll need 3 giant memory sticks,or, probably more convenient, just buy them on UMD. (Or, at considering the price of the PSP, simply buy a portable DVD player.) iTMS hasn't stopped music piracy; why should Sony's proposed online movie store stop movie piracy? Lastly, I'm not too keen on the idea of watching movies "on the go". When I watch a movie(which is exceedingly rare) I like to be sitting down, and with as few distractions around as possible. Listening to music may be a mobile phenomenon...I doubt watching movies will become one.
Going back to school for entry-level jobs?
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.
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.
- 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)
- 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 who make possibly flawed assumptions (ie, does "audio market" == "video market">)Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
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?
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 catalog of movies they own. Expect Microsoft, with their huge piles of cash to buy a studio or media company? Or maybe just buy enough stock to have a say.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
"iTunes can play AAC the same as MP3"
.wav is a wrapper as well as a codec, but aac has DRM built in.
You mean the iTunes player for mac computers, or did you mean the iPod?
Who said mac players were all there were? Sound forge (and SD2 on the mac side) could play aac ages before the ipod came out, I was hearing about aac in 96, it was developed about the same time as mp3 and ATRAC were. It's a wrapper as well as a codec, just like
But no, I don't think for a second that Sony will use any non-proprietary format, if that's what you're getting at. I was just pointing out that the only reason Apple's aac's play on other platforms is that it's not their technology - they'd lock us out in a heartbeat if it was.
They will never stop until somebody makes the
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.
"You know why you do not see me styling wit my homies? Because I have no homies!!" -Mojo Jojo
Not necessarily. Unlike music, people are already used to paying to see (not own) movies.
sudo ergo sum
It might be high quality for 128kbps, but it's hardly high quality given the marginal discount you get over buying a CD. And their DRM is only "liberal" because it's so easy to remove.
I don't see people sitting down to watch an hour and a half to three hour movie on their PSP's. Thats far too long to be sitting squinting at a tiny screen. I'm thinking the killer product would be something like the PSP or iPod with an online TV Show shop. Where you can download an episode or a series at a time, sync it to your handheld device and watch an episode or two on the train to work, while you're having lunch. Whenever you have a quick 20 to 40 mins spare. Charge a dollar an episode or $10 a series and you've got a winning product!