The PlayStation 3 is already my personal favorite console, winning out over Xbox 360 and the Wii (though the Wii is pretty fun in small doses). I flat out think it brings more value for your money than the other console brands do, though in terms of quality they all have their strong points.

Now Sony seems to be leveraging its cachet as a BluRay player and its online connectivity to offer some competition for the NetFlix set top box and the AppleTV. For a reasonable series of tiered fees, PlayStation 3 owners will be able to go online and download the movie the want to watch, when they want to watch it.

So far Sony has some major studios on board with the plan, including Warner Bros, Disney and Fox. The videos will be offered in all quality levels: standard, high definition and Blu-Ray, to complement the Blu-Ray capabilities of the PlayStation 3.

One nice feature of the new downloadable movie service is the ability to store the movies you download on your PlayStation Portable device. This puts the new downloadable movie service in direct competition with the AppleTV. The AppleTV allows you to put movies on your computer or iPod, and Apple is rumored to be developing a game platform for it in future.

PlayStation has set the pricing for the service at $2.99 to $5.99 for rentals and between $9.99 and $14.99 for movies users purchase. The price structure sounds fairly in line with the iTunes and NetFlix plans, though I think that is a bit much for a movie you don’t have a physical copy of with all the packaging and extras that entails.

Other news from Sony includes the future release of an 80GB version of the PlayStation 3 at the current $399 price. For those who have ben waiting for the price to go down to get a first or second console, this is good news. It should lead to price cuts in the very near future.

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Entry was posted on Friday, July 18th, 2008 at 11:02 pm under Apple.

Read more entries by Leslie Poston.
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