Sony jumping into video downloads with PSP?

It really wouldn't be the shock of the century, since Sony's been rumored to be at least be working on PSP music downloads for a while now, but Financial Times is reporting that Sony now has some sort of PSP video download service in the works, and they pretty certain about it. The best news -- if this rumor pans out, that is -- is that Sony is apparently doing this thing in conjunction with other services such as Amazon's Unbox, Movielink and CinemaNow, instead of taking its usual proprietary path. The not-so-best news is that Sony purportedly won't be releasing a fancy new memory-enhanced PSP with the service, but instead hopes consumers will spring for a new 4GB+ Memory Stick to store the video. With supposed room for 10 flicks and accessibility for all current PSP users, it might not be the worst move ever for Sony, but that doesn't mean an 8GB flash-based PSP still wouldn't be the hawterness. Supposedly we should be expecting these new downloading abilities to emerge in Q1 2007, and no, iTunes isn't invited.

[Via I4U]

[Zac T @ Dec 18th 2006 11:03AM]

have the editors left for the holidays?

any word on prices of videos, benifits of this service over how people are putting videos on the psp now?

[James @ Dec 18th 2006 11:49AM]

Current nail-in-coffin count for UMD:

[James @ Dec 18th 2006 11:50AM]

Oops.

Current nail-in-coffin count for UMD: [ERROR -- INT OVERFLOW]

(Apparently, anything between angle-brackets gets eaten).

[ishtar @ Dec 18th 2006 12:11PM]

But isn't it so that the psp can't adress more then 4GB?

[William @ Dec 18th 2006 1:08PM]

Screw the music. Screw the movies. I just want more GAMES on my PSP. Give me a way to 'Rip' my old PS1 games onto my computer or PS3 and then play them on the PSP iPod style and I'll be happy. I know they want the thing to be the swiss army knife of handheld entertainment, but I say screw that. Stop worrying about the small handfull of homebrewers and get developers making games I want to BUY.

[Castle @ Dec 18th 2006 1:12PM]

@William

There are games for the PSP, lots of good ones in fact. Mostly recently Metal Gear Solid Portable Ops, which is getting incredible reviews. Not to mention a great version of Metal Slugs Anthology.

As far as "ripping" PS1 games that's utter bullshit, the PSP store, which should be available for the PSP soon (only accesibly via PS3 now) has them for ~$10.

[Otsego @ Dec 18th 2006 1:26PM]

yup. im still holding out for that 8GB hawtness. wasting money on memory sticks is lame.

[Jeff @ Dec 18th 2006 1:40PM]

As far as Memory Stick prices, just wait for the sales. I picked up 2 1gb Memory Stick Pro's for $15 each on Black Friday. I think regularly they are only $35 each, which is still cheap.

[Mrfreezie @ Dec 18th 2006 2:03PM]

Ahh, the PSP bothers me. Why? Because there is so much potential being completely wasted. If they would come out with a harddrive/flash-based/internal storage PSP, that could quite effectively go against the iPod. If sony would quit s***ing on their customers for 2 seconds, then that might happen.

[Niru @ Dec 18th 2006 2:56PM]

Too little, too late, Sony.

[Ayle @ Dec 18th 2006 3:11PM]

I got my 4gb ms on ebay for 70$ but I'm definetly not planning to use it for this service....I mean why pay more when there are softs wich already allow me to rip my dvds??? But I understand some people might find an utility in that >_> ...

[Porsche 911 @ Dec 18th 2006 3:17PM]

"and no, iTunes isn't invited"

I think Sony wants to add playsforsure video services, next they should add playsforsure music services, such as napster and yahoo, and a larger memory stick capacity.

[Korey @ Dec 18th 2006 4:28PM]

4400 maH battery to follow? I hope 4 gigs is good but I need more then that to watch all the video or listen to all the music I can stuff on that MemoryStick..... And I know alotta people are agreeing with me PSP battery life doesn't suck but with a GPS Unit, 4 Gig Card, and now movies were all screwed with the batteries.

[topmounter @ Dec 23rd 2006 8:21AM]

No thanks, I'll stick with my iPod 5.5G / DS LITE combination.

It amazes me how far off their game Sony has been in recent years.

[Basil @ Jan 17th 2007 10:25AM]

I found a site and you will have access to millions of DVD quality movies and TV shows ready for you to download and watch. http://pspdownload.deepquest.biz