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Sony Takes on YouTube with Video-Sharing Site
thefickler writes "According to Reuters, Sony has announced that it will launch a video-sharing site in Japan as part of its 'quiet software revolution'. Speaking at a press conference in Tokyo, Sony CEO Howard Stringer said that the new site will be 'an opportunity to transmit user-generated video anywhere you want to, anytime to anybody, in a protected environment.' The new site, which will be called eyeVio, will be first launched in Japan, although Sony hopes to also launch it overseas should the Japanese version prove a success. It will be free to users, and the idea is that Sony will eventually generate revenue through advertising."
They can always design dedicated hardware to interface into it. New cell phones? game units? all able to use a propietary YouTube like thing. Possibility it seems at least.
This is news?
...any videos of a lithium ion laptop batteries catching on fire?
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed H
Isn't enough that I ruined a pony, making a gift for you?
oy, not only will the service absolutely suck, the name is ridiculous. How much money did they pay a focus group for that?
How about a better name
UsTube
or
MeTube
Just so it's crystal clear this is an also ran to the big player in the space and an attempt to take the YOU out of the experience.
Besides, exactly why does *user generated* content need protection?
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Protected from who?
You can only watch it on Sony Playstation 3 with 60 GB harddrive, or a PSP with the latest update, but it will check to make sure you're not running homebrew and , you have to provide your credit card number so if you ever watch anything copyrighted they can charge you the fee for the holder of the copyright.
Oh, and you better be ready to provide your SSN because they need to be able to send you to collections if your credit card doesn't go through . . . and, some videos may have viruses, but don't worry about, videos can't have viruses.
To upload, you need to buy a special upload program that only works with Vista!!
I'm so excited about this.
Oh, and ninteno sucks.
Out.
This will make it much easier for Sony to sue most of the people using the site for posting Sony-copywrite files.
Intron: the portion of DNA which expresses nothing useful.
The video sharing game is won. YouTube has already achieved the name recognition and momentum to relegate all others to also-rans. The same reasoning explains why Yahoo still exists as a viable company despite Google providing superior technology and services. Yes, iFilm and other are still pretty good, but YouTube is enshrined. Sorry, Sony.
translation: "... with DRM up the wazoo"
(collary: "viewable only with windows vista")
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
First Slashdotter to upload a clip of Google's proprietary content to this site wins...
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
MeToo(be)
I think rootkits! Yep, rookits and handhelds closed to homebrew developers.
Sony, the one and only.
This is the NSA, we're gonna geet U h@x0r5! Also, what is a h@x0r5?
After their last kick at a 'quiet software' , you'd think they wouldn't want to go there.
Looking at the history of Sony products, it has never been a big fan of interoperability as evident by Beta, Memory Stick, UMD, BlueRay, etc. Is it any surprise it's going do its own thing AGAIN?
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
so here goes.....
As this story has no technical substance and mentions nothing of merit it's clearly
a piece of paid Sony PR. And I suppose is here only to to seed trolling of Sony.
As you wish...
Sony are criminals, in the strictest and correct legal definition. Because of this fact and this fact alone I am not interested in
any of their products and services.
Sony apologists please form an orderly queue to defend how good they "used to be"
There are plenty of ways to improve on YouTube. Ditching the proprietary Flash video for a more portable standard like H.264 for starters.
A video sharing site from a company known for DRM and shitting on its customers!
Yeah...
Its better for them because Google doesn't make money off of it, Sony does. Of course the advantage to the user is less obvious. That side of things seems to get mysteriously lost when companies plan these things, once they know how their money is coming they are happy. Some companies seem to think just because they have something new with x and y feature people will flock to it.
---
I'm not wasting time, I'm rehearsing my retirement
---
Atlanta, GA - Benjamin Fentwitz, a 35 year old unemployed crash test dummy stand-in and amateur inventor has announced that he plans to take on the Big Three Car makers with his own brand new invention, a four-wheeled automobile he's calling the Wiz3UberPunchFugWugun.
"At first, I'm just going to make it available in Cuba." Fentwitz said in an interview. "But watch out, 'cause in a couple of years, you'll be seeing Wiz3UberPunchFugWugun all over the place."
When asked how it's superior to existing automobiles, Fentwitz explained "It's got... um... four wheels.. and... um... a steering wheel... and... and... brakes! Yeah it's got brakes. It's protected."
Fentwitz further said, "Yeah, I know I'm a little late to the party, but you know, I think I've got a real chance of making it big."
Attempts by Fentwitz to further harass media outlets were responded to with record flatulence, made on a top-end Sony media player.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Previous Sony sites, here's their music download site:
connect.com the 20,000th site.
connect-europe.com is the 170,000th site.
Sony got bigger than it's customers, they DRM'd those music downloads, even requiring installation of Internet Explorer and the end result is lousy sales and no customers.
I'm a little concerned when Sony says 'in a protected environment', since there history is to DRM and restrict everything till nobody bothers with them.
Strange little php class might do it http://www.memepark.com/2007/04/27/mystery-php-loo king-for-api-gurus-peer2peer-youtube/
If Sony cannot effectively filter out content that belongs to Google, they could be in for a world of trouble.
Given Sony's background at consumer electronics, it won't be surprising if they put a direct link on their PSP, PS3, cell phone... anything has network capability. Basically, you edit and upload on your pc, you watch it on your gadgets. IMHO, that's a viable plan to take on youtube.
Does anybody else smell a miserable failure coming this way?
Unpleasantries.
You're probably not going to have to bother providing them with your SSN and credit card because it'll unpack and install a rootkit that checks around for all that great personal stuff and sends it back to the mothership. That should save you a lot of trouble.
Oh. And it's going to be battery operated . . .
Just kindly send me your mother's maiden name.
"Here's what's happening. You're starting to drive like your Dad..." - Red Green
Other people touched on it already, but I'll repeat it anyway: this is just another attempt by Sony to create the Sony-net, where only Sony systems (playstations) can connect to it, and where Sony has complete control over what is shown and how. Here's the key portion of the story: "We believe there's a need for a clean and safe place where companies can place their advertisements". This is how the business model will work:
- Companies will pay Sony to play their latest ads, trailers, clips, show excerpts, etc.
- Users will pay Companies (and Sony) to watch ads, trailers, clips, show excerpts, full shows, movies, songs, etc.
- There will be cheap pay-per-view stuff, and expensive full downloads-to-own (complete with heavy duty DRM).
- There will be some user-generated stuff, but it will come from people with a Sony passport equivalent and who can't be arsed to upload stuff to YouTube.
I'm thinking it will be a cross between XBox Live, iTunes and YouTube. The YouTube connection is there to generate buzz (hah! I'm surprised there was no mentioning of the word 'viral' in the story), the XBox Live model is there because Sony sees how this is a money-press for MS, and iTunes is there because everyone's drooling over its market penetration. Except it will combine the sucky aspects of all its components and make them worse: paying for ads in XBox Live (I'm still amazed that MS pulled off that trick), DRM in iTunes and crap content in YouTube.
Could it work? Sure could. Except that I haven't seen anything that tells me that Sony has moved away from its holy grail: to completely lock its users into an all-Sony all the time world. Which means that the DRM will be unwieldy, the network too small and the content too expensive to generate much inroads against the established powers. At least Sony isn't hailing this again as the next coming of YouTube... maybe it has learned after all.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
crappy rap videos made by Sony PR flacks pretending to be kids who want a PSP for Christmas...
Good luck getting people to pick your new service over the one that is already well-established and just as good.
A member of the MPAA and RIAA putting up a site claiming to be the new YouTube, and inviting people to upload content.....
:|
"Here are the keys to the slaughterhouse, cow."
Frankly, I sincerely hope they do sue anyone dumb enough to upload anything to that site
Sony vs. Sony
Galaxies ?
boy, if its going to be anything about it - and as this is sony, i bet it will be - i feel sorry for anyone who gets used to that video service.
Read radical news here
Nope. Flash video is the only reason we have sites like youtube. Remember before it came along how hard it was faffing around with the windows media and realplayer plugins that never really worked very well. Now everyone* has flash and it just works, its great.
*except linux people ofcourse, but surely they have better things to do than waste time on youtube.
Come as you are, do what you must, be who you will.
There are hundreds of user-generated video hosting sites. Just today I was making this list on Wikipedia. My own longer list lists about 150 sites with video (mainly user generated) but there are probably a whole heap of others I've missed! And yes, there are Japanese competitors already out there: mainly Tudou.com and Ameba.jp. This will be no easy ride for Sony.
They will never be able to compete with YouTube, I dont know why they are trying, and I agree that it is a terrible name! Sony abanoned their amazing robot research (Aibo & Qrio) to concentrate on the PS3, and now they're spending their time on this video sharing website that has been done before, probably better.
I think that as a big company with lots at stake, they would have to be very careful about users uploading copyrighted clips, they don't want to get sued.
TechTakeaway.com for tech related articles, videos - lots of robots
I can't think of any other positive with SONY starting it's own video sharing site. Oh, perhaps they can also upload videos showing users how to 'unrootkit' their PC's.
It's funny, how all these big corporations, with all the PhD whatever employees, advisors, board mebers, highly paid CEOs, CTOs, etc. just can't come up with the "next big thing" ideas, and if someone else does, they jump on the bandwagon a year later, while trying to make it look like as if they had invented the best thing after hot water.
Suckers.
> Sony Takes on YouTube with Video-Sharing Site
Considering how badly SONY has been run, they couldn't take on a 10 year old kid armed with a cardboard box.
What's wrong with Flash video? I find that it works the most consistently and reliably of all the ways of doing video that I've seen so far. I think it is great. So what if it is a proprietary format? You're not meant to download the video files anyway.
I am working a site that accepts video upload (not a YouTube knock-off) and I just started implementing a transcoding system to convert all videos to FLV so we can quit our dependence on Quicktime which not everyone has. Flash is much more portable. Remember, it isn't just about the file format. It is also about embedding the video in the web page. Fact is that Flash is currently the most portable and reliable way of doing it. Plus, we get to control the player.
-matthew
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
Linux has Flash Player. I believe it is even up to the same version as Windows and OS X versions. That's one of the reasons why Flash is such a great way of doing video on the web. Despite the proprietary file format, it is, overall, the most portable method of delivering video in a browser.
-matthew
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
This will just let them track uploaded copyrighted material, and who uploaded it alot faster then trying to ask youtube, etc.
If your neighbours roof is flying past your window, you know it's cyclone season.
Should I laugh because it's always nice to see the light dawning in some corporate executive's head?
Or should I laugh because, well, it's taken them pretty long to get the idea of trying a new business model that almost every successful internet company is using?
Or should I laugh because the idea of someone abandoning the existing video sites for what will inevitably a pit of censored and heavily DRM'd content is so patently ridiculous?
Ah what the heck, I'll just laugh.
Flash Video is tied to the Flash Desktop Player. More and more people are starting to take their video watching beyond the desktop - portable media players, PSP's, PDA's, mobile phones, set-top-boxes on your large TV screen are all candidates for video watching, especially short videos such as found on YouTube, and none are served by non-standard formats like Flash Video. While there is a flash player available for some PDAs and smartphones, it does not support the video codecs used by youtube, google, atomfilms and others.
which just by coincidence only Sony happens to make, for triple market prices.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
If you would ask the common everyday Internet user which video site they visit, it's YouTube. They're not going to switch to another video site with only a fraction of the content that's available on there to begin with. AOL Video is in the same situation.
YouTube style video is exactly NOT the type of video that people want to watch on a set-top-box, mobile, etc. YouTube is something you view when you're bored at home surfing the web. Who'd want to stretch that overcompressed video to a large screen TV? That would just look stupid. And besides, the videos are like 4 minutes long. That isn't something you sit down on your couch to watch. YouTube is interactive. It is not a service where you queue up a bunch of videos and just sit back and watch.
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
Oops, that last bit was supposed to be a response to your last sentence. Preview preview preview...
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death