Sony just announced at E3 that Playstation Network users now have the ability to rent and purchase moves and TV shows. Like, immediately -- the service is getting flipped on tonight. It's not just Sony content, either: Fox, MGM, Lions Gate, Warner, Disney, Paramount, Turner, and something called Funimation are signed up from the get-go. Video will be available in both SD and HD, and TV pricing starts at $1.99. Movie purchases will run $9.99 - $14.99, while rentals will be $2.99 - $5.99. What's more, the content is "portable," meaning that videos downloaded on your PS3 can be watched on multiple PSPs. It doesn't look like movies can be purchased in HD, but downloads are progressive so content starts playing a minute after you hit begin the download.
PSN users will also get a single persistent sign-on across every device that can access the network: PS3, PSP, PC. It's not clear whether those aliases will carry over into games themselves or if friends lists will start working across devices as well, however. The integration is scheduled to happen for this fall, though, so you might want to go and grab your handle of choice relatively soon.
posted July 15th 2008 3:03PM
HD Download!? don't you need something like at least 20MB/S broadband to stream HD? Is it even possible with 6MB/s broadband (standard canadian internet speed)?
I watched Lost episodes streamed from abc.com, presumably in HD; they looked pretty good full screen on my 1680x1050 monitor. And I did all that through a 6MB cable connection
No. Full-bandwidth OTA ATSC HD is ap. 18.5 mbps. However, most stations multi-cast, resulting in typical HD bandwidth of 13mbps. And, that's using mpeg2. Using a more efficient codec, you can get acceptable quality at 5-6 mbps, that'll work for normal-sized screens and rentals, and'll still look better than a cable co.'s HD VOD.
But it isn't going to look as good as Blu Ray or HD DVD.
External storage capability for PS3 please, sony
or you can just buy your own external harddrive for not that much money
yay
yay
This might have some sway in making someone purchase a PS3 over a 360, but not a strong one, as the pricing doesn't seem to be quite as competitive. This will definitely have more sway in discouraging current PS3 owners from needing to purchase a separate console.
In my case, I have a PS3 and a popcorn hour, and I was wondering what my options were if I had some friends over and we decided we wanted to watch a movie. I was looking into AppleTV and the 360, but after this announcement, I might not need to get either after all.
Perhaps this is more of a competition starver?
Any word at all on localization?
Assumingly this is a USA only affair for now. It would be great if this was released globally, although copyright and certification usually hitches that up...
I guess this is the end of my PS3 / Streaming Netflix dream...
::sigh::
Oh for crying the hell out loud. Why the hell wouldn't they just put Netflix streaming on it? Damn it, I really don't want to drop $100 on that POS Roku box that has sub-DVD definition.
Why are the download size so big on the PSN? I noticed, while looking at the demo, that some of them were nearly 2GB in size for standard def.
With Divx or Xvid the size for a SD movie is less than a GB. HD is a slight bit bigger but still.
And yes I think they are expensive over the long haul but then again I never bothered to download any movies or tv shows from XBL seeing that I can do that all myself for free. I can even transfer it to my PSP, PDA, Macbook, or Wing without issue.
I don't see the point of blu-ray when you can download HD content for much cheaper from PSN than if purchased a blu-ray disk. Seem like a shoot in the foot.
Single sign-on is something they should've been had but hey it's one step closer to being like XBL. Keep the competition going!
Why? Was there an announcement that this would never happen?
Just because it's not available at launch doesn't mean it won't happen in the future.
Bugger-- this was a reply to Rick @ Jul 15th 2008 7:38PM
So what are the details on rentals? How long do they last?
FUNimation are the guys that do Dragonball Z :):):):)
One question? Why wouldn't Sony make this accessible to Canadians. Especially considering the current rate of piracy in Canada. This makes no sense, I thought the idea behind this was to make the media easily accessible to the consumer at an affordable price. Hmmm I guess our high dollar still doesn't have the same value after all. BS imho