Sony’s PSP handheld gaming/movie/music/web browsing system and more will get its own movie download service in 2007 to rival the video downloads iPod owners enjoy through iTunes.

While the movie service doesn’t yet specify that it will also handle music downloads, the advent of downloadable movies, donwloaded and played from a Sony Memory Stick Duo card (available in sizes of up to 4Gb), may rejuvenate movie viewing on the PSP handheld.

With its large and glorious 4.3-inch widescreen, which is far larger than that of the iPod at 2.5-inches, and Microsoft’s Zune at 3-inches, movie viewing is much more pleasureable on a PSP than its main competitors.

That’s not to say that other devices from companies like Creative and Archos don’t also have 4.3-inch widescreen devices – they do – but at 20 million PSPs sold (and rising), it’s a no brainer for Sony to offer downloadable movies.

The big surprise is that is has taken to so long, especially given the number of video conversion tools that allow users to convert existing video files into those that look and fit better onto the PSP screen.

The PSP also lacks a hard drive, unlike the iPod, Zune, Creative, Archos or other devices, which could well be an impediment as it forces you to buy a large capacity memory card to make full use of the PSP’s capabilities.

The PSP could already play movies thanks to the mini CD-like format called ‘UMD’ or universal media disc. Unfortunately, as the discs could only be used on the PSP, and the prices weren’t that much different to DVD prices, UMD sales didn’t go anywhere spectacular.

Once UMD prices fell in Japan (and Asia), they started taking off in a much bigger way – but they still involve the manufacture of discs when they could be offered via download instead.

Now both will happen. Sony is unlikely to stop making UMD’s anytime soon – it’s how the majority of games are accessed and played on the PSP after all. But it’s a move that has finally come.

We might even see a PSP version 2 sometime in 2007 that comes with a hard drive or at least 16b of inbuilt flash memory after all. Sony will need to do something to counter the next Apple iPod, which may well be released at January’s Macworld, which is only two to three weeks away as I type. Time will tell!

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Entry was posted on Tuesday, December 19th, 2006 at 6:45 am under Media players, Technology.

Read more entries by Alex Zaharov-Reutt.
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