Slashdot Mirror
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.
always 10 years behind the porn industry
...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
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.
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.
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.
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."
Does it come with a surround sound rumbling butt plug? Otherwise that small screen aint going to be too exciting.
"iTunes for Movies"... hmm... ins't that what BitTorrent is for?