Sony To Launch PS3 Video Download Service

An anonymous reader points out a Los Angeles Times report that Sony is planning on making movies and TV shows available for download through the PS3 "as early as this summer." Sony hopes to make use of the roughly 4 million PS3s already sold in the US to compete with similar services such as XBox Live, which began offering video downloads over a year ago. "One of the service's greatest obstacles may be Sony's own culture. Sony Chairman and Chief Executive Howard Stringer has been battling a corporate silo mentality in which divisions within his company work in isolation, undermining new initiatives. The PlayStation group in Foster City, Calif., has been notoriously aloof. Once, a former executive said, it scuttled plans for a movie subscription service for the PlayStation Portable even though Sony Pictures had supported the initiative. What is more, the company, looking to safeguard its film, television and music holdings, has been an aggressive champion of copyright protection, often, critics suggest, at the cost of technological innovation."

Comments

Re:If they continue according to past history

[Neon Spiral Injector]

The PS3 has an officially licensed DivX decoder, along with support for generic MPEG4 (think Xvid) video.

It can play those files from over the network via a UPnP server, from a USB hard drive, various memory cards (if your PS3 is so equipped), or from a optical disc.