Sony signs up all six major studios for HD movies on PlayStation Network
By Donald Melanson 
posted March 9th 2010 2:10PM
posted March 9th 2010 2:10PM
Well, it looks like Sony has a little treat for PS3 users now that they're able to turn their consoles back on -- it's just announced that it has signed up all six major studios to deliver HD movies on the PlayStation Network (the first company to do so, as Sony is happy to point out). That includes 20th Century Fox, Walt Disney Pictures, Paramount Pictures, Universal Pictures, Warner Bros. and, of course, Sony Pictures Entertainment, which combined have an initial slate of 19 HD movies available to buy or rent -- including "Fantastic Mr. Fox," "Star Trek," "District 9," "Inglourious Basterds," and "The Wizard of Oz," to name a few. Those are only available in the US at the moment, but Sony says it plans to also roll them out to the U.K., France, Germany, and Spain "soon."
HD ftw
PS3 FTW!
@HerbieDerb
PSN FTMFW!
@MoonWalkerCTE
PS3 FTPWTBBBQ PEW PEW PEW!
Great! Now give us more than 24 frickin' hours on a rental, and I'm happy.
@MoonWalkerCTE
F**cking Prawns ftw
@MoonWalkerCTE
Wake me up when they have previews and movies are a buck cheaper. I'll keep renting BRD from blockbuster and HD cable pay per view until then.
@MoonWalkerCTE
I remember reading something about the PSN offering subscription plans to the PSN offering different incentives like Cloud servers, etc.
I would love to see them come up with something to subsidize monthly movie rentals for PS3 owners.
What about the Canadians eh?
@jayjay1 They don't love us.
@jayjay1
They're professional athletes, they can afford Blu-ray.
@Nitesh i'm starting to hate being Canadian... anything good becomes available a thousand years after release... WTF!
@jon pro-athletes in Canada don't make no money, unless they're hockey players...
@igudov Hey, at least we don't have to wait as long as New Zealand...
@jayjay1 as a citizen of americas hat, i REALLY think we should stop getting shafted with all the new gadgets/tech/everything :[
@jayjay1 just put this in the pile with Hulu and Netflix... sigh Ohwell, HD downloads would eat way too much of my Rogers bandwidth allowance anyhow.
@igudov: "athletes in Canada don't make no money, unless they're hockey players..."
...and they play for a U.S. team.
@decypherSMC Wait, Canada doesn't have Netflix OR Hulu? How do you survive? Do you have to play board games and knit at night with your family?
@Hardcore1
Obliviously we eat poutine and play hockey with are spare time. Sometimes we put on are red suits and ride our houses up and down the country side.
@decypherSMC It's crazy of how out of control ISPs are getting with this bandwidth capping. I have Bell and I have 100GB of bandwidth. This is of course before Bell changed its plans. Now that I check, the plan I'm on only has 50GB. That's crazy. Of course Bell hasn't changed it for me since I bought it before the change, but this is crazy. How do they expect to give you all that speed if you don't have the bandwidth to utilize it properly. Oh yeah, you can buy extra 40GB for $5. Fuck that.
Personally, I'm glad that foreign competition will be allowed in telecommunications. Somebody has to come in this country and tell Bell and Rogers to shove it up their asses.
What't the price for rental? Does it beat Netflix ?
@knsandeep
Yeah, wonder what it does to the netflix option...
@knsandeep Rental prices vary, but can be somewhat high. I paid $5.99 for the HD rental of The Hurt Locker.
They best have at least Dolby 5.1 / DTS support. Decent sound for me is as good as having a fine picture..
As a person that loves his PS3 I have to say the PS3 video rental service is expensive and abysmally slow. If they fixed one or the other it would be attractive.
@glamajamma
No joke. If Sony wants to be a big player they need to add some sort of streaming and just more elegant way to have movies. Right now the store is the only thing that really works well. It can't compete with on demand right now because it takes so long. If netflix can stream movies so can Sony.
@glamajamma
They have Netflix...
Part of me says "About Fucking time", while the other part looks at Sony's HD movie prices, then looks at Amazon's Blu-ray prices, and then waits for UPS.
Last I checked, the prices for HD were $1 more than Apple charges (not that I have an Apple TV anymore), most movies had no preview trailers, and the interface was a tragedy. Maybe now Sony will finally get serious about movie streaming...
Nintendo CEO -- this is how it's done in 2010. Write that down.
SD FTL!
@DoctarPeppar
Oh, Nin CEO replied, he said,
"Thanks for that memo, we have been waiting FOREVER for Sony to finish reading it after MS forwarded it to them. Cheerio and excelsior!"
Doesn't the Xbox do this already? guess they finally realized Blu-ray isn't doing that well.
@knwldg0010
I thought all of you guys had been extinct already??
shew! shew! get outta here!
@knwldg0010 Um, XBox doesn't (and never will) have all six studios (since Sony will probably never license their films to Microsoft)
@knwldg0010
says the guy swapping disc on final fantasy
@elijahblake
Buuuuurn!!!! Disc swapping FTMFL!!!!
I'm still gonna be staying with netflix rather than this tho.
@knwldg0010 Lol, and I suppose HD-DVD is on a roll, eh?
@knwldg0010 Yes the xbox already does this and it has all 6 major studios including Sony pictures.
I'd have to call this a coup for Sony. Now they just need a real competitor to Xbox Live.
@psycros
well PSN isnt that bad considering it is free... god knows where they get the money from to keep psn alive :S
@BubblegumBalloon They get the money from their expensive ass HD rentals. Which now feature all 6 major studios!
Good Stuff!
I don't get it...Isn't the big draw with the PS3 the addition of a Blu Ray player? Unless you have a really fast internet connection, I doubt the quality will be as nice as Blu Ray. Since the article didn't say "EXCLUSIVE" deal, I'd guess this won't be only for PS3 owners.
@thatsme
well, i doubt you ever see Sony Pictures (which are many of the Greatest movies) on the 360 or wii..
Maybe now sony will start their own Netflix type deal, like $10/month for movie rental or something...
@elijahblake
it wouldn't really benefit me that much though. I can't remember the last time i rented or bought a movie... ;)
@thatsme
Blu-ray is nice, but sometimes it's handy to just download a show rather than go to a store or wait for Amazon to ship it out.
@thatsme I doubt the picture would ever beat bluray, even with the best connection. The compression will just be too high. That being said, the non-videophiles in the world (AKA 95% of PS3 users) would never notice the difference...
The more content the better, no matter what compression.
@thatsme
1. Not everything is worth owning or renting on blu-ray
2. I have no idea what you mean by 'exclusive'. You do know there's this other brand called Xbox that has been renting Hi-def flicks for some time now, right? The big difference here is Sony is boasting that they have a all 6 major networks... and I can't even tell you which is absent from XBL. If some want to see that as some negative aspect of XBL... well, sure, I guess. From my perspective, it's the non-participating studios that are hurting themselves more.
3. While I absolutely get what you're saying, on paper, a 1080P downloaded movie should really not be much different than the same movie playing off blu-ray... except for maybe the soundtrack? I watch TONS of streaming content from Netflix to FunnyOrDie on a 46 inch Samsung LED via my PC and Xbox and is the main reason I really don't care about blu-ray. Most sites these days stream in hi-def if possible. It's sad, the free episodes of FlashForward on ABC.com is actually better quality than if you paid to watch them on regular DVD. I wouldn't, and don't, buy too many blu-rays because I feel big round discs will be gone in a few years. BD is really an in-between technology.
Good for Sony to move to this (and about time). It's only natural.
@Hate Everything
If you're not going to be getting HD video streaming, you may as well stick with Netflix which is already available on all 3 gaming consoles and dozens of other things which also offers other services the this new thing doesn't like mail order (which usually takes a day or two). They haven't put a price on this new thing but if it doesn't compare favorably to Netflix, I don't see it doing any better than Blockbuster.
@Hate Everything: A 1080P downloaded movie is MUCH different in quality to a Blu-ray disc. They use basically the same compression technologies, but the disc data rate is far higher, making for a huge reduction in artefacts and problems. For example, say you have 4Mb broadband - it'll take you somewhere around 24 hours to download a Blu-ray disc. Unless you're waiting that long for your HD downloads, it's not Blu-ray quality.
Because of the way video compression has improved over the years, you're less likely to notice the difference (obviously it also depends on the quality/size of your TV etc as to whether you'll be able to tell). Basically, compression artefacts in older video formats were obvious because they resulted in sharp blocky edges, but the newer formats generally have softer-edged problems.
So, is Blu-ray much better quality, yes it is (just as CD is much better quality than a 192 kb/s MP3), can you tell, maybe not. (I buy my mp3s at 320kb/s but could I really tell the difference between that and 192? I doubt it.)