Right move - Wrong direction Sony.
Continuing my thoughts on mobile cinema... Whilst, there is a debate over how widespread the desire to watch movies on mobile devices is, there are similarly strong precedents and social constructs that indicate that mobile media not only is viable, but has bright and vibrant future, Everyone thought Radio would die in the face of TV (die not in the sense that it would dissapear altogether but rather fade into the background as an semi-obscure exception to modern media) But it didnt, instead it was re-shaped into an extremely viable communication medium by social habits and modern living - most notably Car-Bound commuters. ?Drive time? has became the new radio prime-time as it was the only medium that could take advantage of the physicality of being in a car driving. The second phase came with Mp3-players and Pod-casting that effectively alowed for user-controlled timeshifting of audio-only programs. And now major broadcatsers have geared much of their programming and planning to this focus.
These same social/urban constucts are certainly one of the substantial factors that have the potential to drive mobile cinema. Train commuters and regular aeroplane flyers are at the top of the list for whom watching short-films, documentaries, sitcoms, news and even feature filmes on a mobile devices, are a perfect fit between the media, the form, the function and the environment.
This is where Sony was right in the steering of the PSP towards a universal media device - one that included gaming, video, music and image. Where they were very, very Wrong however, right from the outset, was their futile and purile attempt ?control? the distribution of mobile content by creating an entirely new format, Universal Media Disc (UMD), and locking their releases to it. Anyone with half a brain knew this was never going to work and now the failure is evident with UMD movie releases being virtually given away at major retailers so they're not taking up shelf space.
The UMD is in essence a truly archaic sensibility about media distribution. I've gonna stick my neck right out I'd say any form of distribution that is tied to Physicality - a solid, physical thing the content exists on and cannot be moved from - is little more than a farcical attempt to hold onto antiquated economic structures. Certainly much of contemporary media distribution is still working with these forms - games, DVDs - but it might be argued they do so purely out of ?tradition? and established consumer patterns; patterns that are quickly dissolving. In the age of downloading and digital, non-physical, tranference the idea to create a brand new physical form was destined to crash and burn. Even the most humble of free software tools can ?rip? a movie from a DVD disc and render it to a new complete, data-reduced, file. The PSP, with its flash memory storage, was already set up to store these ripped movies and play them back - why the hell would you buy a UMD that can only be watched on the PSP when you can by the regular DVD, rip it to watch on the PSP, and still have the full large version for your TV set?? I'm not advocating copyright infrngement but just the simple and justifyable perception from consumers that if they bought it they have the right to watch it... wherever they like on whatever device they like.
When i first got my PSP I was very impressed with so much of it but astounded by the lack of a hard-drive. Memory sticks are fine but, until capacity improves, they are no replacement for an internal HDD. Even small media player devices such as those from Archos have internal 20,30 and 100gb hard drives?! Why not the PSP? Of course 2 minutes pondering this obvious ommision lead myself (as with many others) to conclude that it was nothign short of a deliberate move on Sony?s part in a vein attempt to limit copyright infringements and drive sales of physical product UMD?s? Niether happened and memory sticks got cheaper with bigger capacity so they effectively set themselves up for failure by holding onto antiquated ideas.
How likely is it that the next incarnation of the PSP - PSP2 - will have an internal HDD..? Now that UMD is a dodo for movie distribution (it will no doubt remain, for the time being, viable for games) it?s more than likely Sony will be forced to move in this direction? A direction they should have gone in the first place.
Posted at 01:00AM Apr 14, 2007
by Mike Jones in general |
