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."

Comments

Shouldn't they just call them

[Anonymous Coward]

Walkmovies, since they already have the Walk-thing down?

Re:Shouldn't they just call them

[SFalcon]

Sure, then Sony will be slapped with lawsuits after hundreds walk into oncoming traffic while watching a movie.

Re:Shouldn't they just call them

[nxtr]

That would be Movieman. Walkman, Discman... ;)

PSP an iPod replacement? HAH!

[kryogen1x]

Not with the expensive memory stick duos or w/o a umd burner it won't.

Re:PSP an iPod replacement? HAH!

[flamechocobo]

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) 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.

Re:PSP an iPod replacement? HAH!

[doctor_no]

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 1GB MS Duos at bargin prices by christmas, or affordable MS Duos that are significantly larger than UMDs in the near future.

And by the time the PSP is apporoaching the end of its life cycle cheap flash memory in the dozens of GBs should be out by then. And hopefully the PSP would be at a price point similar to a GBA SP. If you consider this as a buisness model that will be around at least as long as the PSP it starts making more sense.

Re:PSP an iPod replacement? HAH!

[Torgo's Pizza]

At that point, why don't you just get a portable DVD player which can play movies from *any* movie studio? Let's face it... no one is going to watch movies on their PSP unless it's pr0n. Then all that's going to lead to is sticky buttons.

Re:PSP an iPod replacement? HAH!

[vistic]

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 almost 100% of your attention in order to enjoy it. You can even read a story while listening to music. Try doing too much multitasking other than maybe something like folding clothes, while watching a movie. Even in the cases where you can do more than one thing, the screen still is small and sucks.

Re:PSP an iPod replacement? HAH!

[noknownpurpose]

The small screen on the psp is actually quite stunning. At the distances you hold it from you its big enough to enjoy the movie as well. I showed mine to some coworkers who commented that it was like holding their plasma screen in their hands.

Prices?

[mOoZik]

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?

[jm92956n]

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?

[aussie_a]

What will the prices be like?

$0.99 per scene.

Re:Prices?

[EggyToast]

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?

[IANAAC]

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.

Re:Prices?

[EtherAlchemist]

Well, with the Starz thing Real is doing, 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.

Re:Prices?

[famebait]

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

Re:Prices?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not only is the DRM liberal, the file format is high quality and the store is easy to use.

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.

Read between the lines

[Suhas]

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....

Re:Read between the lines

[Goatie]

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

Re:Read between the lines

[2674]

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.

Re:Read between the lines

[SiO2]

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 don't understand your argument as to why Sony will fail in this endeavor when Apple has, for the most part, succeeded in locking down their hold on the music downloading business. Apple already did that which Sony is supposedly trying to accomplish.

SiO2

Assinine?

[slashdot4ever]

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?

[Lisandro]

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?

[nunchux]

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."

meh, mainstream Hollywood

[Anonymous Coward]

always 10 years behind the porn industry

A good fit

[timeOday]

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.

Great Idea if they "Get It"

[rokzy]

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"

[bechthros]

"Apple's AACs don't *need* an iPod to work"

That's because AAC is a product of Dolby, Apple just licensed it.

PSP SP?

[Jozer99]

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...

Re:PSP SP?

[Jozer99]

It would get cheaper and bigger, if Memory Stick was not a propriatary format that is only manufactured by Sony and a few other companies. This monopoly makes it so that Sony doesn't have to compete by offering larger cards. That is why Sony Memory Sticks enjoy almost no market share, outside of Technophobes who purchase Sony Cameras not realizing that they will be extorted for storage. Apple has not "moved" from hard drives to flash. They now have two flash based iPods, and six hard drive based iPods. In some situations, flash does make sense. For movies, it does not. A full length movie of decent quality, in MPEG4 (or equivalent) compression, is about 700 MB. My latest casual search of Froogle reveals that 1 GB Memory Stick DUOs go for $120 US (1 GB CompactFlash cards are $60 US). That means for every movie you want to take with you at a time, that is $120. Sony's new UMD Disk is not really an option, since there are no blank media or drives available, and we are at the mercy of Sony and the MPAA to extort money from us to rerelease a limited selection of titles we already own on DVD, but have to purchase again.

The thing is....

[bechthros]

...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.

Re:The thing is....

[Mr.Progressive]

Have you heard about The Long Tail? 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....

[jalefkowit]

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:

• The Long Tail
• Millions of Markets of Dozens

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

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...

[Johnny Mnemonic]

• 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.

Re:This could rock, except...

[Calroth]

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.)

Re:This could rock, except...

[Niten]

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?

[VeryProfessional]

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.

It will probably be a hardware addon for the psp

[t0qer]

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.

Seriously, I wonder...

[dinohum]

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

[obeythefist]

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?

Re:Predictions for next year

[Anonymous Coward]

8) Profit!

Re:Predictions for next year

[ezavada]

8) People realize it's better to watch movies in the comfort of their living room with friends, and sales fall off.
9) Apple comes out with iFlix and delivers DVD quality movies to the Mac Mini in your living room via a Netflix-like queue and with TiVo style recording features.
10) Netflix and TiVo sue Apple :-)

To be honest....

[demondawn]

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.

I see failure in Sony's future

[natrius]

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...

[terraformer]

...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

[rsborg]

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 who make possibly flawed assumptions (ie, does "audio market" == "video market">) :-)

Re:UMD could be a success

[mlk]

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

[One Div Zero]

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?

Heh

[News for nerds]

>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?

What about the PC you dopes?

[Kaorimoch]

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

[Dark Paladin]

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.

Tips for the movie studios

[mrbcs]

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 for my kids and not have to worry about them breaking the cd's or tapes. I also have the added bonus of removing the previews that I don't think are suitable for my little kids. (at least I can still do this for a while in Canada)

I don't want to DRIVE BACK to the video store. I'm sick of it. Let me pay a couple bucks and download a movie without restrictions. Somebody please have the balls to try this. All the download options now are for america only. It may be only the geeks that are doing this now but all it would take is for our freinds to see how easy it can be and they'd be sold.

Bandwidth?

[ackthpt]

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 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.

Suround sound

[Anonymous Coward]

Does it come with a surround sound rumbling butt plug? Otherwise that small screen aint going to be too exciting.

did they ever heard of BitTorrent?

[RicardoStaudt]

"iTunes for Movies"... hmm... ins't that what BitTorrent is for?

PSP is too large to carry around

[green pizza]

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!

Re:That's not why...

[bechthros]

"iTunes can play AAC the same as MP3"

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 .wav is a wrapper as well as a codec, but aac has DRM built in.

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.

Tricky at best.

[DwarfGoanna]

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.

Apple will have a similar service within the year.

[Hellad]

I will bet that apple will have a similar service within the year. They have already declared this the year of HD video. I am certain that this will include a movie service. In Tiger's preview, Apple offers the following hint of a codec which I will bet be the file format:
QuickTime 7 features an ultra-efficient new video codec called H.264. H.264 delivers stunning video quality at remarkably low data rates, so you see crisp, clear video in much smaller files. Chosen as the industry-standard codec for 3GPP (mobile multimedia), HD-DVD and Blu-ray, H.264 represents the future of next-generation, high-definition DVD playback. Numerous broadcast, cable and videoconferencing groups consider H.264 the video codec of choice for their deployments. To learn more about H.264, visit the H.264 technology page or consult the H.264 FAQ.
I don't think that Apple will offer any sort of video iPod, instead Steve will either offer a larger device with a decent size display or simply sell the movies as viewable on laptops. Obviously a 4lb laptop is a pain to carry around, but I'm guessing the selling point would be the lower power consumption because dvd's drain battery so much more than normal usage... These are my bets, what do you guys think?

Re:But...

[daninbusiness]

Remember when Apple announced the mac mini and one of Sony's key people was there?

This prompted speculation about Apple and Sony collaborating for a Tivo-like service?

What if Apple and Sony were combined for this movie-related service effort? Download movies from sony (using apple software) onto your mac mini (or viao) and if you like sync with your PSP for on the go viewing.

The PSP and ipod, while both being able to play MP3's are distinct enough devices that each shouldn't hack too badly away at the other's market share, no?

Although Apple and Sony's respective product lines have a lot of overlap and are in direct competition, (and may not encourage much co-operation between the two companies), they could both gain a lot if they were able to combine their expertise. Perhaps that is a bit naive on my part.

a comparison

[CySurflex]

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 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 - 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

[piecewise]

The top 500 movies will be available to purchase via the Internet...

But they're all Betamax!

The Danish are already doing it

[donely]

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.

The eventual decline

[webhat]

every content provider is looking to incorporate more and more DRM as the quality, cost, and ease of creation of copies improves.

the music industry doesn't care about people copying songs off the radio. it didn't even really get its panties in a bunch when CD-Rs first hit the market. or when mp3s hit the ftp servers. It went ballistic when anyone could download a single application and instantly find a never ending stream of perceptibility loss-less perfect digital copies.

likewise with the MPAA and DVD encryption, likewise with the new Cable Set-top standard.

They want to cut out MythTV, Tivo, splitters, H-cards, and cable descramblers. It's becoming too easy to get at the current data, so they want a change.

with the analog system working (fairly) well as is, why else would they create a new 'standard' for the digital system? It certainly isn't in the interest of the consumer.

Why doesn't Sony support the Blu-Ray with its stock rewritable feature?
Why did Disney/Circuit City/et al try to push (the bad) Divx onto the market in the first place?

It isn't because consumers are clamoring for less control or cheaper movies.

The time is coming when content producers are going to have to realize that their profits will no longer come from format-updates (repurchasing 8-tracks as CDs, VHS classics as DVDs, etc), and will -not- come from service-style access to data. Classic TV advertising may even have to give way to pure product-placement campaigns.

Cable will realize that a move to pay-per-channel is the way to support content without advertising in our new time-shifted digital reality. Some people -will- pay $1/mo for TLC. Home Depot will still pay for product placements in Trading Spaces. Maybe the Super-station will go away - but the cable companies, and popular channels, need not.

the film industry has already shown that the theatre experience is not losing out to cheap cam copies. they've learned that feature-rich dvds or dirt-cheap dvds are preferred to the customer over hacked-together recompressed copies on filesharing networks.

The record companies will need to realize that to win with digital music requires providing the best quality, with the least hassle. They will need to realize that they must beat file-sharing on features. People will give up hunting around for a good (not mislabeled)256kbps rip of Britney's newest song - if they know they can just hit iTunes or its ilk and cough up $1.

Fair Use needs to win out. These purported 'losses' from file-sharing need to be revealed to be grossly overestimated fabrications. (A PSA from a supposed union set painter claiming that file sharing is killing the movie industry, and threatening his job - airing during it's highest grossing year of all time is particularly tactless)

DRM is the tool of the content dinosaur. If they concentrated on actual content piracy rings - where big money is being made off black-market copies, and abandoned their fruitless DRM research - their profits could be higher than ever.

But such is not the reaction of anti-competitive cabals. Being forced to -compete- is not what they do. Suing, threatening, bullying, bribing - these are the blunt instruments they wield instead of the precise tools of innovation, imagination and competition.

So in the meantime - expect every advance to carry DRM in the fine print.

Well, I would

[Moraelin]

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, since I'll also have to take a trip the next day to bring the movie back. So it's 2 hours wasted for a 1.5 hour movie. It's not a very efficient use of my time.

Or you could call it "time management" or "planning" instead of "lazy", if that feels any better.

Would I pay a few hundred bucks to save those hours? Damn right. My time is valuable. After the first dozen movies, the PSP and memory stick will have paid for itself.

I suspect there are others like me too.

Pretty much the most successful inventions were those cattering to the lazy. We all have washing machines because we're too lazy to wash clothes by hand. We have vaccuum cleaners because it's less effort (and causes less dust) than using a broom and weekly taking the carpets out to beat the dust out of them. We have remote controlls and digital tuners with memory because we're too lazy to walk to the TV and twist knobs to switch the channel. Etc.

In all those cases, we pay more money to save work and time.

So don't underestimate the market potential of cattering to the lazy :P

Re:That's not why...

[TheRaven64]

It's a wrapper as well as a codec, just like .wav is a wrapper as well as a codec, but aac has DRM built in

Umm, no. AAC is a bytestream format. As with MP3, most encoders just dump the bytestream into a raw file with no container at all. Since AAC is part of the MPEG-4 specification[1], the official container file format is based on Apple's .mov format. Apple's .m4p files are not standard AAC files - the DRM is entirely Apple's and is in no way part of the AAC or MPEG-4 specifications.

[1] Some profiles are also part of the MPEG-2 specification, and so could be wrapped in MPEG-2 container files or transports.

I think everyone is missing the point

[superpete]

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!

I predict the future of Apple!!!

[rhandir]

I hate to ask, but......even though the post, and the article is dated March 31, isn't this a bit suspicious...? I mean, I know that it was "last updated at 10:42 GMT (Yes, I RT*A), but you know those Brit news organizations love to pull people's legs.

On Topic:

That said, I think I know why Jobs hasn't pursued the hand-held media player thingy. Remember Sony's (former)[0] President standing next to him at the launch of the imac? [1] What do you bet that those two know very well what the other is up to?

Sony gets to try be the iTMS of the movie biz, without jumping through the hoops that Apple would to convince movie studios to go along. (The are a move studio!) Apple gets to watch Sony take all the risks. (Dead pixels , anyone?) Meanwhile, they can continue to focus on the minaturization tech they've got going for the ipod. Why would Jobs want to produce an ipod for watching movies on a tiny little screen, when he could make an ipod in a year or two that lets you watch High Def movies on any screen in your house? Sounds like this could fit rather well with the miniMac as a home entertainment PC.

Okay, stop reading. I'm going to relentlessly connect the dots now, and I know you've probably heard all this before.

You know the drill: the miniMac plus a broadband connection plus a computer monitor becomes a platform for watching downloaded movies...particularly HD movies, since Jobs has a thing for them, and people who can afford really good broadband tend to have HD tv's anyway. So, you get the miniMac as a user-friendly Tivo-iTMS combination.

But wait! There's more! Now, for a low, low, price, (heh) you can get a iPod-Video! Take your rental movies, and play them on any screen, anywhere! Show grandma your home movies by just hooking up the (included) rf adaptor to her 30 year old TV! Show your boss footage of the latest progress on the big engineering project! Keep your kids occupied in the SUV with an endless loop of Barney! (And no pesky DVD's in the van to get lost or scratched!) If you are really bored on that 20 hour plane ride to Japan, you can squint at the small OLED screen that covers the entire surface of the ipod. (No ipod tatoos for you! One year!)

oh, and if that doesn't blow your mind, think about the kind of PDA Apple could make with an ipod covered in a high resolution OLED skin.

____________

[0] President Kunitake Ando, replaced by Ryoji Chubachi. Not to be confused with the new Chairman-CEO, Howard Stringer. AP press release here.

[1]see this Ars Technica article.