Sony Details New Video System

[wraggster]

Sony held a group business briefing in Tokyo today to share its plans for 2008 to 2010. Taking up a good chunk of that time was Sony Computer Entertainment president Kaz Hirai, who introduced new non-game initiatives for the PlayStation brand.

The company's long awaited video on demand service will target PlayStation 3 and PSP, adding movies and television programs to the PlayStation Network on top of the current game content. Videos will be sold through a video store on the network and will be viewable both in download and streaming form.

America will get the first shot at the video service this summer. The program will then continue on to Japan and Europe.

While further details will be announced at E3 next month, sample images of the video store shown at the press conference resembled the current PlayStation Store, right down to windowed video previews of content. The sample store image had buttons allowing the user to toggle between video store and game store, suggesting that PS3 users will have to access just one main shop interface to get all their downloadable content.

Categories of video content in the sample images included "New Arrivals," "Movies," "Television," "Anime," "HD Only," "Rentals," "Purchase", and "Top Downloads." The sample images also listed pricing for a couple of titles: a Ghost Rider rental in HD at $5.99 and a Ghost Rider purchase copy in SD at $12.99. These prices are presumably unofficial.

PlayStation products are just the start for Sony's video plans. By 2010, Sony plans on expanding the download service to televisions, PCs, and mobile sets.

In addition to the new video service, Sony also unveiled a brand new initiative: Life with PlayStation. This new program will offer real time news updates and weather to PlayStation 3 users via an interactive globe interface. The globe interface displays recreations of the weather and shows headlines as you move to different locals. The headlines can be clicked on to open up more details in a browser window. Users can play music off their PS3 in the background as they use this service.

Future plans for the Life with PlayStation service could go beyond just the globe. Hirai mentioned the possibility of introducing a timeline interface for letting PS3 owners sort and view their photographs chronologically.

Sony also addressed the PlayStation Portable's multimedia functionality today. Sony will be expanding the portable's network functionality, and will at long last offer direct connection to the PlayStation Store some time this fiscal year.

http://uk.ps3.ign.com/articles/884/8...0&RSSid=884551

[Justise]

Wow!
Does this means that they are finally going to support more video formats?

I'll still be watching my anime from Fansub though....

[mcdougall57]

Wow!
Does this means that they are finally going to support more video formats?

I'll still be watching my anime from Fansub though....

sony being user friendly? I doubt it. They'll probably stick with some DRM .M4V files

[Buddy4point0]

Sounds pretty sweet.

[Nocuddle]

Rental download?
So I hav to "upload" it back to s0ny to return my vid?

:P

$13 bucks bah, a rip off.

[myuusmeow]

@nocuddle: It's $13 to own the movie, you obviously don't need to "upload" it back (unless that was a joke), there will just be a time limit and after the limit you can't watch it again, or maybe it'll be just watch it once.

Anyway, this would be awesome if done right, I wouldn't mind streaming episodes of Seinfeld, The King of Queens, Married...With Children, anyone of these television shows, or any of their movies, especially because they own Columbia Pictures.
Even better if they extend the store much more, I wouldn't mind much more demos. Getting a 800MB game just to find out it was horrible sucks. Oh well, time to stop dreaming.

[Justise]

Anyway, this would be awesome if done right, I wouldn't mind streaming episodes of Seinfeld, The King of Queens, Married...With Children, anyone of these television shows, or any of their movies.

I don't see any anime on that list....

[AdamRav]

Yea i read bout this a few months ago

Sony have teamed up with SKY to deliver on demand video content to the UK and Ireland

Dunno if this is diffrent to what sony will release in the US

heres a source to what i read

http://uk.playstation.com/psp/news/a...d-on-the-move/

[AdamRav]

This will be called Go!Video

for anyone who wants to read up more on this

[Qmark]

which will be rendered completely useless and obsolete as soon as someone homebrews up a "Hulu player", if such a thing doesn't exist already.