Sony PS3 now offers Video On Demand (Movies and TV shows)

[FulciLives]

I didn't notice any news here so I thought I'd mention it.

Sometime around July 15, 2008 the Sony PS3 started offering VOD of movies and TV shows. I only found out about it yesterday because I was watching the Sony E3 presentation where they talked about it and I thought "oh wow how cool" and then they mentioned that it was live as of that day (this presentation was on July 15, 2008).

I immediately tried it and found a lot of nice offerings although I haven't rented anything yet. Some movies are in SD only and some are in SD and HDTV.

I was excited to see MATRIX: REVOLUTIONS was on there in HD but not the other two (go figure).

Anyway if you have a PS3 try it out.

To access this VOD content you need to select the word VIDEO at the left top of the screen (when in the Playstation Store). Easy to miss if you don't know about it.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

P.S.
Link to the official Sony press release about this:

http://www.us.playstation.com/News/PressReleases/480

[yoda313]

@fulclives - thanks for the info. What speeds do you need to do this? I have about 380kpbs. Can you download it first for a rental period ala netfilx etc..? I could wait the download time and then watch it later. I just doubt I have the speeds to watch it streaming...

By the way - do you have an HDDVD drive? You should see the Matrix on HDDVD - IT ROCKS! Only bummer is Matrix Reloaded doesn't play in hddvd on my xbox 360 for some reason.

[FulciLives]

@fulclives - thanks for the info. What speeds do you need to do this? I have about 380kpbs. Can you download it first for a rental period ala netfilx etc..? I could wait the download time and then watch it later. I just doubt I have the speeds to watch it streaming...

By the way - do you have an HDDVD drive? You should see the Matrix on HDDVD - IT ROCKS! Only bummer is Matrix Reloaded doesn't play in hddvd on my xbox 360 for some reason.

According to the Sony press conference you can watch the download as it is downloading OR you can download it and watch it later.

When I was looking at the "rental agreement" it said you have X number of days to watch it after you download it. I think it was 14 days but I'm not 100% on that. It might have been longer. It did say that once you start watching it that you only have 24 hours to watch it. I think you can watch multiple times and pause and fast forward/rewind or in short do pretty much whatever during that 24 hour period.

The files appear to be MP4 files. Based on file size I am guessing that the HD content is 720p and not 1080i/p but since I haven't downloaded/rented any yet ... it's only a guess. I don't think any of the HD movies were more than 4GB (give or take) and many of the SD movies were around 1.5GB in size (give or take they varied). Some (very few) movies have a preview and I think the preview is SD but it looked pretty good to me on my 51" 16x9 WS HDTV. I suppose you could compare it to upscaled DVD Video.

I'm curious as to the quality so I may download (rent) something in HD and check it out this weekend. Most of the HD movies were $5.99 (for the rental) but I seem to recall some were as cheap as $2.99 (I think that was SD content). I seem to recall the TV episodes being $1.99 each.

I know THE MATRIX trilogy is coming to Blu-Ray but had all three (instead of just the third movie) been there in HD I would have rented them now. I can't imagine why Warner would post only the 3rd movie in HD (the first two aren't even listed in SD).

I did notice a few other movies on there in HD that don't as far as I know exist on HD-DVD nor Blu-Ray. One that I can remember is the cult movie MAY from a few years ago.

Oh another kewl feature ... after you download the movies to the PS3 you can copy them to your PSP and watch them on the PSP screen OR hook the PSP to a TV and using the TV out feature you can watch the movie on a TV. I don't know if that only works for SD or also HD (I'm thinking SD only). I don't have a PSP but for those that do and travel ... that's a major kewl thing. In fact they said you can download the movies via the Playstation store on a computer and then plug your PSP into the computer (USB) and transfer that way. So if you have a computer and a PSP but no PS3 you can still get the movies.

It all seems kewl to me.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[t0nee1]

Thanks for the reminder Fulci...I did read about it awhile ago,just forgot about it... 8)

[yoda313]

@fulcilives - thanks for the details.

This is similar to what is already available to XBOX LIVE. Those are direct downloads. However I believe some of those are essentially limitless viewing with expirations like years out and some only a very short time. I haven't done the XBOX LIVE download yet either.

It would be interesting to check out the ps3 and since it has download instead of streaming it would be tolerable. Also the XBOX LIVE movies are avaiable in hd at 720p with 5.1 and 480p at 5.1 as well for sd material.

[FulciLives]

I didn't know XBOX had this already *shrugs*

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[yoda313]

Oh yeah you can get tv shows too I believe. You can get Stargate Ark of the Truth as well.

Lord of the Rings is available too. Don't know how many are available but it changes all the time. I do believe they had Rush Hour 3 on there earlier in the year.

I imagine that was why they started selling a 120gb harddrive for people who want a lot of movies.