Can Sony Click With A Download Store?
From cNET:
Scores of companies are betting there’s gold in helping go-go commuters and road warriors catch the latest episodes of 24 and Grey’s Antatomy. Apple downloads movies to iPods. Cell phone carriers stream TV shows to handsets. Sling Media’s Slingbox connects users to their home TVs from any Web-enabled handheld.
But a company uniquely positioned just a few years ago to be among the front-runners in the nascent mobile-video category is conspicuously missing, said James McQuivey, a Forrester Research analyst. Sounding a little like Marlon Brando, McQuivey argues that Sony, with the PlayStation Portable (PSP), should have been a contender. He notes that Apple’s iTunes has sold 50 million TV shows, seized a huge market lead and proven people will watch video on small screens.
Sony in their introverted wisdom, have been quietly working on Connect, without getting public feedback as they went along. The result, as service (and software) so horrible to use, that they may as well been lying on a beach for the last 2 years.
The ONLY way I can see Sony getting anywhere today, is buy taking some very bold moves.
1/ Acquisitions. There is plenty of good software are stores out there. Why reinvent the wheel.
2/ Get users onboard, rather than alienating them. Nobody knows what Sony is upto, until it’s too late (for Sony) and too late for the consumer. Open beta’s feedback channels.
3/ Drop DRM, or at least make all their portable players proper drag and drop devices, that work under Mac/Linux/Windows and supports standards like Plays For Sure DLNA/UPnP.
As the CNN article says, the PSP is a great platform, and Sony have been slack at utilizing it. I really like Sony products, but I sincerely hope that the axes swings at some of the departments responsible for the major gaffes.
I certainly hope that Sony can. As much as I criticise capitalism most of the time, I think competition is a good thing, and a new Sony e-store might push the industry forward. Sony’s hardware has always been very good - a store and a good front-end/jukebox software would be great.
But the comment above is spot-on - Sony have done this very half-heartedly so far. Their only choices are to invest millions setting up something that not only matches iTunes, but tops it, especially in terms of usability and selection; or, as Mark said, they can acquire, as they did with Grouper, which probably helped them set up Eyevio. The industry is just too knew to expect either hardware or a service to be successful independently - their must be tight integration of both. It is preferable, however, that Sony avoid their insistence upon the proprietary and obscure DRM.
The thing I’ve been repeating a lot lately is that some integration of the Walkman and Playstation brands is Sony’s best bet. The PS3 and PSP should be seen as part of the Walkman family and vice versa - there is too much demographic overlap to ignore it. Furthermore, given that the PS3 and PSP can both access the ‘net, a store that sells movies/music is almost certainly coming. Not making it compatible and interoperable with all Sony products - in the way Sony have done with the NW-A800 series and the PSP - would be a mistake, and a costly one at that. I don’t think that a closed ATRAC system is the way to go, especially since ATRAC has long since lost its claim as the best-sounding codec. Following Apple/EMI’s move towards DRM free AAC seems the most logical step.
As for video, it is remarkably odd that a company who is perhaps best known for their televisions hasn’t extended this expertise into the portable field. The PSP is a great device, and I’m not just saying that because I have one - barring its battery life and lack of internal memory, it really is the best portable video device out there, particularly when you take into account everything else it does. There have been many many hints recently - look up “PSP beats” in Google and you’ll see some credible-sounding rumours - so (after all this unnecessary typing!) I think we just need to sit tight and see what they release.
I just wish they would improve CONNECT or pass it along to another company to improve. I’m sure RealNetworks could come up with a better solution than SonicStage. Heck I wouldn’t mind Rhapsody CONNECT. If Sony wants to continue using it’s own DRM/format, I honestly don’t mind just tell RealNetworks and have the whip up a Music Jukebox Management solution. ATRAC3 in MagicGate is no more awkward than AAC in FairPlay. As long as DRM is integrated it’s not an open format. I personally believe AAC @ 128kbps and ATRAC3 @ 132kbps sound very good pending your playback device!
Subscription music content & Windows Media DRM with Sony… I’m not going to hold my breath on. Though the Mylo has Windows Media DRM 10(limited to internal memory) I doubt it’ll ever come to the PSP. Sony would probably haft to work with Microsoft to integrate the DRM into MagicGate and Sony just doesn’t want to have much to do with Microsoft. I’m sure if they had a choice they wouldn’t ship Windows on their VAIO’s. CLIE’s were Palm based. Sony DVD/CD players only playback MP3 (not WMA). Decoding unprotected WMA via Memory Sticks and Network Walkmans is far different than from protected WMA’s via a subscription service. DRM interoperability maybe different though. I can see Sony working with Microsoft to ensure the conversion of secure purchased (not subscription) WMA’s to secure ATRAC3 files… atleast someday. But then again, labels may remove DRM altogether….
If and when music labels start allowing their music to be sold without DRM, I hope that Sony chooses AAC. Most of their devices that have shipped within the last 2 years support AAC aswell as their Sony Ericsson division, the branch that won’t support ATRAC3. For the older stuff, just convert AAC to ATRAC3. Sony will never choose to support WMA purchases with CONNECT. That’s like Apple allowing OS X to be run on generic PC’s and pigs flying… With AAC, they had a hand in co-developing it, so that’ll be the format.
I believe Sony is slowly opening up in utilzing more open-standards, but they’re trying too hard to be proprietary implementations with them.
As far as I can tell VONGO still plans on allowing movie downloads for the PSP… But as said in other articles, it’s the DRM that’s holding it up…
I’m sure the CONNECT movie download store is going to feature H.264 (CABAC) with DRM just as Apple is using H.264 (CAVLC) with FairPlay.
WHERE IS THE MOVIE DOWNLOAD SERVICE SONY?
The worst thing that happened to SOny was Microsoft becoming a console developer, they have with their infrastructure and open mindedness been able to zip up the nex generation of now content delivery and livingRoom entertainments system.
SOny’s top boys made enough stupid mistakes to lose a serious fight when they actually had all the weapons to make real strides into the future market place, I really don’t think they are going to recover from these mistakes.
By not seriously investing in a solid solution to /itunes and xbox media delivery system - Sonic Stage and Connect just don’t compare. And the crappy 3D market place for PS3 based on second life is not acceptable to much 80’s SCi Fi - VR rubbish.