PSP video download service launches in Japan

Sony has launched the first phase of a new service which will provide Japanese consumers with downloadable video content for the PlayStation Portable - starting with free content, but moving on to paid-for TV episodes.

Called Portable TV, the service is being operated through Sony's ISP company, So-net, and takes advantage of the inclusion of the high quality H.264 video playback functionality in the new PSP firmware which was released today.

Initially, around 100 free downloads will be available, including trailers and independent movies, but the company plans to introduce content ranging from TV episodes to movies and music videos in paid-for format shortly.

Each download will clock in at around 256Mb for a 30 minute segment, and pricing details have not yet been announced. Users will be able to brows the Portable TV site directly from their PSPs thanks to today's addition of a web browser function to the hardware.

The move follows the addition of the ATRAC3plus music format to the PSP, also in today's firmware upgrade, which will enable users to purchase music from Sony's Connect Music Store for playback on the PSP.

As yet, however, they cannot browse the music store on their consoles - but that's functionality which seems likely to be added in the near future.

After a lot of fiddling with Google translate and the pages, I managed to make myself an account (what with Japan still counting years in eras? I had to search in order to find out that I was born in the 61th year of the Showa era). Let's just say that if they ever browse their database for such things, they'll wonder what the heck is my strange name. They REQUIRE you to write your name in Chinese characters (kanji), Japanese characters AND roman letters. I've copied they examples or other parts of the sites for my name (I believe I've put Man Required as kanji for my name). They have that strange login name scheme, where your name is LOGINYOUCHOOSE@(something 3 letters long that have no apparent significance). I'm "guizzy@z44" ;D

I then tried to download something from my PSP (firmware v 2.00, of course!). Absolutely nothing happened. I tried with my computer. Nothing again. Some CGI didn't activate properly...

Many hours later, I looked a little closer at the site and found a page with the html filename howto.html. From what I gathered, it only works from Internet Explorer (ActiveX) and downloads by the USB cable. Tried that, and it works.

But it's about the same thing as PSPDrive's "Send to PSP" option, only it sends AVC files. So far I've downloaded trailers for "Der Untergang" and "La marche de l'empreur", and the quality is very nice. It's not real fullscreen, but it can be stretched without much loss (less than I managed to get with PSPVideo9).

So I'm dissapointed that I couldn't just download like they showed in the video (though it explains why they didn't play the one they just downloaded, but one they already had on the memory card), but I'm confident they will add it. I mean, I can download any filetype to my Memory Stick thanks to the new browser, it'd be pretty stupid not to let me get videos on the fly as well!

Portable TV