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Wired: Sony Prototyping Personal Video Player 150

Posted by timothy from the all-the-cool-kids dept.
Cinematique writes "Wired is running an article about Apple beating Sony in the personal music player fight. The author suggest that Sony should skip its planned answer to the iPod and focus instead on a portable video player. But there's a catch: the legality of the content such video players would use."
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Wired: Sony Prototyping Personal Video Player More

Wired: Sony Prototyping Personal Video Player

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  • This is exactly what I've needed for YEARS!

    Finally, something that I can watch movies on during those long, boring rides in the car, or on the plane, or during class when I should be taking notes!

    This is truly the end all of my personal video needs.

    If only there was some device like this already on the market, one that I could play games on and send email and program on, too.


    Oh well. I'll have to stick to my TV for watching things and this wonderful little LapTop for the rest.
    • "If only there was some device like this already on the market, one that I could play games on and send email and program on, too."

      You mean like a laptop?
    • Sony is already working on a handheld device called the PSP [gamespot.com] which will play games, video, and audio. I would not be surprised if they added on support for email. In addition to all the usual shit, the PSP will have 16:9-format widescreen TFT LCD (480x272 pixels, 24-bit full color), MPEG4 AVC decoder, 802.11 (b?), IrDA, USB 2.0, Memory Stick, AV in/out, Stereo headphone out, and be powered by a Lithium ion battery. It also has some kind of expansion port. You could plug a tiny keyboard into it via USB and us

  • Legality of content? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by BizidyDizidy ( 689383 ) on Saturday October 11, 2003 @08:17PM (#7192305)
    I don't see as how this should be a problem.

    First, if you own a DVD, you should be able to "rip" it to one of these players as fair use. This would probably often be a useful feature.

    Even cooler would be if the future of DVRs would be to download content to such players, just like a computer to an IPOD. Being able to "TiVo" shows and watch them whenever you want would be quite a nice feature.

    Is there any "copyright" issues with using TV shows like this? How could it be any different from using a DVR in the first place.
    • Sorry, but reading below has informed me that ripping a dvd is in fact illegal. I admit I was unaware of this. Further, I think it's pretty ridiculous; I imagine in a DMCA, violating copy protection argument, but fair use is really getting bent over in this deal. In fact, such a player makes the argument about violation of fair use better than anything, imo.

      If someone could post a good link to a discussion of this legality, I'd be very appreciative. Also, I still think this would be a great device if just

    • If such things violate the DMCA, then this is precisely what we need to get some of that overturned. This would be a major profit opportunity for Sony, so if they turn their full legal backbone behind it, some of the more restricted aspects of the new copyright law might become more lenient.
      • Well, the DMCA doesn't apply to Laserdiscs (it never had any copy control mechanism) or any VHS tapes that don't happen to have Macrovision. The video resolution of even VHS might be good enough for a portable's small screen.

        The problem is that this might cause yet more internal issues in a company such as Sony, one division makes movies and another makes hardware to play them.
    • if you own a DVD, you should be able to "rip" it to one of these players as fair use.

      Under the DMCA, that would be illegial.

      Being able to "TiVo" shows and watch them whenever you want would be quite a nice feature.

      That would be legal, only if you are MOVING the files, and not COPYING them. Technically it's a small difference, but legally it is major.
      • Being able to "TiVo" shows and watch them whenever you want would be quite a nice feature.

        That would be legal, only if you are MOVING the files, and not COPYING them. Technically it's a small difference, but legally it is major.

        So as long as I have them, noone else can watch them on TV? ;-)
    • well, it's not only the legality, but how many users could (and would) rip their own dvd's? it's not like with music were any number of spyware infested music jukeboxes rip subpar audio content into exclusive, DRM enabled formats *wink*WiMP/Real*wink*, but ripping DVD's is a task not every casual user will embrace. also, the usefulness of such a device is questionable, as stated before.
      the device's saving grace i'd imagine would be TV rips, i could see Sony adding support for the proposed device in their
    • Is there any "copyright" issues with using TV shows like this? How could it be any different from using a DVR in the first place.

      Most TV broadcasters consider taping their shows to be an infringing use because you can skip commercials. They also consider showshifting to be an infringing use (if you've seen TimeWarner's TV commercials for their DVR, have you noticed that they carefully avoid mentioning that you can fastforward through commercials?)

      Unfortunately, copying a show from the device you recorde
  • I'm sure it'll do just as well as portable DVD players. Who are they kidding comparing something like that to an iPod?

    I've always thought of video [tivo.com] and audio [slimdevices.com] as two completely different classes of product. Sure, the people who buy one buy the other, but CE companies always seem to ignore the fact that we actually use music completely differently from audio. The technology may be similar, but to assume that adding video to an ipod will make a better product just because it does more is quite ridiculous.
  • "But there's a catch: the legality of the content such video players would use."

    That was never a 'catch' when it came to the iPod.

    • Apple rolled out a service to complement the iPod with legal music. I think that answers this question rather nicely.

      More interestingly, would be if Sony took the same approach. An online store where I could download quality video content, especially TV shows, for a reasonable price would be interesting indeed.

      • Apple rolled out a service to complement the iPod with legal music. I think that answers this question rather nicely.

        iTMS was released over a year after the first iPod and even then only for mac users (about 5% of computer owners, don't know what precentage of iPod users but I would be shocked if it was above 25% seeing as even when iPod was only supported/only included software for macs 3rd party programs such as xplay allowed people to use iPods with other OSes). I would hardly call this a similtai

  • What I want is a portable device that I can plug into my TV, like a VCR, and record shows to watch later when I'm on the train. A portable TIVO of sorts. Any takers please?
    • Archos has a new line [archos.com] of mp3/video players out. They can record tv shows using the DVR module. Very pricey though (up to $900).
    • 1) Ty is right - this would be more useful if it were a TIVO like device. One of the fundamental differences between audio and video content is that while people will listen to a song dozens of times before they get tired of it (and even then probably want to listen to it later), a movie is best watched one, maybe two times at the most (unless you're some sort of sweaty-toothed freak). Fresh content is needed, and TIVO delivers. Video-On-Demand content is the other natural complement. There is the sligh
    • Read a book.
    • Well Tivo is a closed platform, you have to void your warranty in order to be able to download content from it. I would investigate doing this with a ReplayTV, there's software for downloading content, it should be fairly easy to modify it to sync content that it records with something like the Archos 340. The touch part is you have to transcode the mpeg2 from the replay into mpeg4 for the archos.

    • The Archos AV300 [archos.com] lets you record video directly. It's exactly what you're looking for.

      It's not not cheap. But the quality of the screen and audio and video playback is excellent.
  • why can i see this thing only playing sony titles only?
    • why can i see this thing only playing sony titles only?

      don't worry, it won't happen unless Sony is owned by Gates, which will never happen.
    • why can i see this thing only playing sony titles only?

      narkotix, step up and receive your certificate of redundancy certificate

      • i did post it as the 5th-ish comment and none of the other comments were referring to DRM as for my grammar...i posted an AC correcting it you blind troll!

  • iPod rumors (Score:3, Informative)

    by znu ( 31198 ) <znu.public@gmail.com> on Saturday October 11, 2003 @08:22PM (#7192330)
    There's a rumor [macrumors.com] that Apple might introduce a device next week which would allow the iPod to be hooked up to a TV for video playback. A lot of people have speculated that the iPod was never supposed to be just about music ("pod" suggests something more general), so this wouldn't be too much of a surprise. A built-in color screen would be the next step, I guess.
    • Wasn't there also speculation that they might roll out an upgrade to iTMS in conjuction with the Windows release? What if this was an iTVS (Video Store)? I would be VERY interested in the ability to buy quality video content in this format, ESPECIALLY TV shows.
      • Much to early for that IMO. First they need to prove to the world that selling music online will work well and video (even "short" TV shows) will need much more HD space and bandwidth.
        • read the wired story. sony is claiming 10 hrs on a 20 gig or something like that.

          also, they have already proven that selling music online works.10 million songs enough for you? (selling those 10 million to the 5% of the market that has a mac and an ipod)

          wait till the 16th when the windows version...

          once again, apple will show the rest of the industry how to innovate...
          • read the wired story. sony is claiming 10 hrs on a 20 gig or something like that.

            Hmm...when I backup my DVDs I usually use a 352x288 MPEG-2 Video Stream with 1500 kbps (variable bitrate) and a 128 kbps MPEG-1 Audio Layer 2 (mp2) audio stream. This gives me pretty good quality and it allows me to put ~3 movies on a DVD, usually with place to spare. Each 90 minute movie has around 1.2 GB that way. So with 20 GB that gets me 25 hours of viewtime in pretty good quality on my TV. If you chose to only watch you
    • It's too soon. They just updated their iPod line.

      cheers- raga

  • Skipping iPod clone is a poor idea (Score:5, Insightful)

    by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Saturday October 11, 2003 @08:22PM (#7192331) Homepage Journal

    I'm not reading the article - I've given up on wired entirely - but that doesn't matter. There will necessarily be a gulf in price between a device which plays mp3s, and a device which plays video. The needs for storage, a fancy display, and additional processing (either in the form of a dedicated video decompressing engine in hardware, or a generally more powerful CPU) pretty much guarantee that a video player is going to cost more money.

    Meanwhile Apple is taking pretty much all the money for a large-capacity portable mp3 player, and Sony would like a bite of it for obvious reasons. They own all the technologies they'll need to implement it, so they need not license anything to do so - the only costs are for development and production. Sony is known to be able to churn out hardware at very low costs, so this should be a doddle for them.

    Let's also not forget that Sony is bringing out their new somewhat-PS2-based handheld, the PSP, in the not so far future. Since they already have a handheld video player coming, they might as well toss off the mp3 player right now, and work on video later.

    • Just MHO, but I think Sony wouldn't bother on this market because they already have products that kind of fill that niche - Network Walkmans and MiniDiscs.

      Granted, the iPod offers much more than those (more memory and flexibility), but most people use it just to hear music anyway.

      Then again, while I'm very content with my MiniDisc for audio purposes, an iPod would be very nice for his hacking flexibility...

    • I don't think that storage will be a huge problem. The IPODs are packing 20GB on those little laptop harddrives anyway. If you figure they'll use an LCD the size of an IPODs face a DivX of a DVD movie will probably only take up about 500MB anyway. That's 40 movies. Anyone who expects to get as many movies on a similar device, as they could MP3s, is a little bit nuts. My assumption that they could make a player the same size as an IPOD is a little bit silly too... hee hee.
      • Frankly it doesn't need to be much larger if you spend enough money on the PC board, in order to support very fine connections, which lets you use smaller (chip) packaging. I mean the difference between an audio iPod and a video iPod is basically a bunch of die space and maybe an integrated color lcd controller, with only a driver stage off-chip. All of this will significantly raise the price of the device but people expect to pay good money for a video player, look at how much portable DVD players cost.

        P

        • I really doubt you'd be able to keep it the same size as an iPod with current tech. You'll need many times the battery capasity of the iPod for the following reasons:
          • Larger, brighter backlight on all the time
          • More proccessing than music
          • HD will have to be spinning pretty much all the time, or significatly more, since the bandwidth will be higher

          My iPod locked-up once, I left it for a while becuase I was busy, it was almost flat after doing nothing but just spinning the HD for an hour.

  • Add on to TiVo / etc (Score:3, Interesting)

    by hattig ( 47930 ) on Saturday October 11, 2003 @08:24PM (#7192338) Journal
    Plug this into the Network / Firewire / USB2 port on a TiVo (or future TiVo) and then download the videos that you have recorded on the TiVo onto your device (recoding for the devices display size of course, why store a 720x480 MPEG2 when a 320x240 MPEG4 would be better, and allow more to fit on the device?) for watching.

    As TiVo, etc, appear to be fine legally, this logical extension would be. Watch that Family Guy/Simpons/film on the train to work instead of at home where the wife will bitch because she wants to watch tennis.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • Actually, that idea gets better as you realize the result:

        Currently, the to make use of the iPod you need to have a Mac/PC. Sad to say, lots of consumers still don't have PCs - or at least have sh*tty ones.

        Making the PSX the connection point for the PVP device would potentially open up a broader customer base for Sony.
    • "Plug this into the Network / Firewire / USB2 port on a TiVo (or future TiVo) and then download the videos that you have recorded on the TiVo onto your device (recoding for the devices display size of course, why store a 720x480 MPEG2 when a 320x240 MPEG4 would be better, and allow more to fit on the device?) for watching."

      Nice idea. There's just a slight problem with your suggestion here. TiVo's don't have USB 2.0 ports, Firewire ports, or even *network* ports. As it stands, TiVo Series 2 units have tw

  • Maybe its just me but I just don't see the point.. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by PierceLabs ( 549351 ) on Saturday October 11, 2003 @08:24PM (#7192339)
    I'm not sure I really see the validity of carrying movies and TV shows around with me. With music its different - I can listen to music while driving, while coding, while jogging, etc. I just don't see the same appeal for video. While it would be a very useful device for those long plane rides when you're unfortunate enough to not be travelling on JetBlue or to calm a child on a road trip (and you already have a larger screen for them to watch) - I just don't see video being a big a draw.

    Listening to music is just a much more passive activity than actually watching a movie. I simply see fewer instances where I'd want to use it AND I wouldn't want a more compelling experience from a gameboy or cellphone games. Maybe its just me - but by the time this market develops - I would expect that 4G phones would be able to deliver all the video I need right to me :)
    • Agreed. A portable video device always struck me as a device that would be created by a company only because they can, not because they should.

      I absolutely cannot fathom why anybody would want an expensive device to watch video in a postage stamp size. Also, a hard drive (random access media) is a complete waste for linear video data, and expensive too. Not to mention the limited battery life on something like this, unless an extremely expensive battery is used. I believe that these video players will appe
    • comeon

      1. if your a student, record all lectures on a handycam to DV tape, then you can fall asleep

      2. convert/copy to the video pod and watch later and fast forward the boring bits.

      3. watch jayleno at school.

    • I think it would do well in London, for instance, where people can spend more than an hour a day on the tube, but not so well in the US - where people are (hopefully) paying attention to the road when they're communting :)

    • Two Words: (Score:2, Funny)

      by torpor ( 458 )
      Pocket. Porn.

      Enough said.

  • That's a stupid issue. Sorry. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Esion Modnar ( 632431 ) on Saturday October 11, 2003 @08:26PM (#7192349)
    But cassette tape players, VCR's, etc. have been made for years, and the responsibility for legal content on these devices has been squarely on the user. I know the music industry had tried to squelch them, just like everything else, but as long as there is a significant use other than piracy (and there is) then the {RI,MP}AA can go fly.
  • ...and why am I in this handbasket?

    ...and is there any wonder why, in this era of pocket-sized Tivos, the bubble for e-books has burst [slashdot.org] before it even ballooned?

  • There are three big questions. First, why would use a 3.5" screen when 5" screen DVD player go for under 400. The second is what kind of DRM is Sony going to include to protect it's products. The third is where is the content going to come from.

    The last two are important. The iPod and the Apple store are not encumbered with excessive DRM. Sony, targeting a product for the windows market, is probably looking to develop some sort of DRM protected pay-per-view movie download library. I can easily imagi

  • "...But there's a catch: the legality of the content such video players would use..."

    Since when has the legality of the content not been an issue with portable audio players as well?
  • forget hooking it up to tivo. follow the mp3 player style and let us download mpeg/wmp/mov/rm/etc onto it. businessmen will want it for trips, students will want it for the bus(and class), everyone will want it for porn... needless to say, if you build it we will come. (pun intended :)
  • If I recall correctly when Diamond Multimedia introduced their Rio MP3 Player, the RIAA sued them to stop sales. Then they dropped the suit in 1999(?). Anyways, I am pretty sure legality was an issue for the portable MP3 player, but dropping the suit was just telling people it's ok to produce them. I'm sure if Sony produced a device similar to the one mentioned in the article, the MPAA would probably and try and sue especially if you could 'rip' DVDs.
  • Giant corporations have lots of reserve cash and are able to leverage it in all kinds of ways. Unfortuately this also makes them slow. From the article:

    Sony was so worried about piracy, and sapping revenue from its Sony Music division, that it chose to do nothing and let Apple ascend. Apple made boatloads of cash from the iPod, while Sony struggled to remain profitable as revenues from its main cash cow, the PlayStation 2, plummeted.

    Sony lost out because it is trying to do too many things - trying to be
    • Sony isnt going to do shit.!!!!
      That's what happens when a huge electronics
      manufacturer also owns an entertainment subsidy.

      Look at their MD technology...
      never went anywhere
      died on the vine
      why ??
      they refused to let it cleanly store data
      without jumping thru sony only drm protocols
      that would not allow 2 way movement of stored data

      just a bunch o dumbasses....
      don't look for anything "open" ever from Sony
      spend your money on anyone else but
  • This month's edition of the IEEE Spectrum [ieee.org] has an article about the ZVUE, a portable movie and MP3 player. The article is pay to view on the web (unless you're an IEEE member), but the player's web site is here [zvue.com]. Alas, it has a proprietary CODEC. It also seems to me that I read some kind of blurb about "security through obscurity", although I could be mistaken. Here's the text from the IEEE's article:

    Putting the Move Back in Movies

    A personal video player puts films in the palm of your hand for US $99

    B

  • I'm just wondering by what system the new hardware will be powered. Considering Sony's move towards Linux in development of new PS, it's natural to think Linux would be their choice. But they might develop some system of their own...? There are a number of portable DVD player with 7" LCD screen already available in the market. Swapping DVD drive with HD shouldn't be that hard.
  • ...why do you think they push the atrac3 standard so hard? It's because they are a major record company too! I doubt if they would want to increase competition in the mp3 player market without requiring the proprietary atrac3, and anyone with enough music to fill up an ipod certainly isn't using legal music...
    • Maybe in America iPod is king, but in Japan, it's just another one of those cute things Apple makes but no one wants. In Japan, MD is king. In Japan, you can go to Tsutaya (kind of like block buster, but doesn't suck) and rent a CD... Yea, and it get's even better; you can LEGALLY COPY IT TO MD. You can't even play them in computers. Everyone has a MD Player. I tell friends I'll send them an MP3 in the email of this artist or whatever if they don't know who I'm talking about, and they have no idea what an M
      • I wouldn't say MD was that big in the UK, but then neither is the Ipod. I know of no-one that has either for portable music.
      • personally i would rather spend my 1 hour train ride with 15 gigs of music variety... but most japanese would rather read, sleep or text-message.

        people don't buy mds because they're great... they buy them because they are functional, and all their music from the last 10 years is on them.

        sony's digital audio sucks... their entanglement with media production (artists) has kept them using drm that is added baggage to their hardware. it's only a matter of time until sony mainstream consumers realize that thei

    • anyone with enough music to fill up an ipod certainly isn't using legal music

      Erm, maybe if your encoding at shit quality, but consider for a moment... I have over 300 legally purchased cds. Average 12 tracks a cd, 3 minutes or so a song, encoded at 256kb/s. Thats a bit over 2megs a minute. This all comes out to about 30Gb. Unfortunatly i bought a 20Gb archos jukebox back in the day so all my stuff is encoded @ 192Kb/s and i'm almost out of space on my portable. I still buy cds quite often, so i'm holding

  • Maybe I'm missing something here, but haven't Sony already announced that the forthcoming PlayStation Portable will be able to play video provided on UMDs?
  • Does anyone else see this as an obvious tie-in to the PSX? Given the hard drive recording and dvd playback features on the psx, as well as IIRC firewire and memory stick ports, Sony has a great chance to tie these two products together.

    It would eliminate worries about piracy for Sony, because it would be a simple matter to tie one Sony PVP to a PSX, like Apple does with iPods and Macs, letting Sony control both sides of the transaction effectively. Since most people can't record directly to digital form

  • My Eyes Are Bad Enough (Score:3, Funny)

    by vjmurphy ( 190266 ) on Saturday October 11, 2003 @09:40PM (#7192603) Homepage
    My eyesight is bad enough staring at 17" CRTs and 15" LCDs all day, now Wired wants me to watch movies on a 3.5" display?

    Sheesh, at that size, no one will be able to tell IF Han shoots first.
  • I know it won't be simple and elegant with style like the iPod, I can see it now, alot of useless buttons on the side, three or four different colours of plastic, a brand name, a company name, a weird logo, and a bunch of clutter on the device in different fonts/etc. They will find a way to make it all stupid and "cool" like cellphones, just like when I saw this oriental girl with a cellphone with a round screen, hello kitty background, and a bunch of other crap. If it is from sony it just won't be the sam
  • The web contains an ocean of interesting video content, its just poorly organized. The Irate [sf.net] project for audio shows a way to harvest legal music content, the same can/will be done for video. I run a site [demandmedia.net] that aggregates links to interesting video around the 'net.

    With the BBC putting their archives online and the archive.org saying they will provide infinite storage and bandwidth for multimedia content, legal content for these devices is no problem.
  • I'm 99.99% sure there'll be a lot of accidents when people hooked up to these things try to do PVP-incompatible actions like driving, crossing streets, walking, etc.
  • Well its my Fiance's Clie I got her for her birthday, but it features a QT video player. I mean quality isn't that great on the 320x somthing 65k color screen, but it works.

    Although with the iPod getting larger everyday, I don't see why you shouldn't be able to DL a movie to it. I mean I have LOTR TTT on my HDD and it takes up about 1.2GB compressed in DivX and all. Hell that would fit on my 5GB iPod.

    I use the iPOD for more than just music. My 250 song collection leaves plenty of room so spare, so I

  • Ridiculous... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by evilviper ( 135110 ) on Saturday October 11, 2003 @10:42PM (#7192783) Journal
    There probably isn't a whole lot the electronics giant can do now to unseat the iPod,

    This is absolutely ridiculous. There are millions of things Sony could do to beat the iPod.
    On of the reasons I look at Sony products first, is because they get incredible battery life out of all of their products. What's the point of hundreds of hours of music, if you need to carry stacks and stacks of AA batteries, and swap them every 2 hours?

    Then there is capacity, price, formats (I'm still looking for a good player with Vorbis support... Spex support would be very good too.)

    However, don't exepct much from Sony. If you've looked at the products they've made in the past few decades, you can see that they are fully in-bed with media companies, and include all the DRM they can.

    DATs were killed off due to DRM. MiniDiscs are just hanging on right now, because of DRM. You aren't allowed to make many copies of your own music, and they do everything they can to prevent you even having digital output at all. You can copy from your computer to your minidisc, but you can't copy the files back. They are going out of their way to give you a product with restrictions you don't want. With hundreds of products just like this, I can't imagine they are going to see the light, and throw out all restrictions immediately.

    The big problem is that all electronics makers are in-bed with DRM of all types, which is the sole reason why computers are doing so well. Instead of doing the same things with stand-alone electronics, we have to do it with a general-purpose processor, because no sector other than the computer industry is willing to give you permission to access your own property how ever you want.

    Apple is only partly in-bed with restrictions against the public, so they made a device that was far better than anything the electronics industry would ever think of comming out with.
  • Could this be the return of the Video Watchman? It'd have to have the following features: a tuner, at least a 3.5" screen, output to a larger TV, accept UMD compatible media. I don't see what the RIAA/MPAA's problem with this thing is either. Sony seems to be afraid of the 'big bad wolf' here and if they don't get started on this project, Apple is sure to do something similar to this, think iVision.
    • I don't see what the RIAA/MPAA's problem with this thing is either. Sony seems to be afraid of the 'big bad wolf' here...


      I have seen the enemy and he is us - Pogo


      Sony is both a music and movie company. They ARE the big, bad wolf.

  • I've been eyeing devices like these off and on for the past several months or so. If I were to travel more than I do, one of these devices would be invaluable. I don't generally watch much broadcast TV. Before I graduated from school and when I still lived with my parents, I found that more often than not I would watch shows that I had previously recorded on their PVR. I find that I generally manage to stay busy enough that I don't find the time to watch television shows when they are broadcast anyway.
  • ... then they should make video for the PVP available for sale. Otherwise, people are going to turn to P2P etc to get stuff. I wish these guys would show some sense. You don't create demand and then not fill it. Apple knew this, hence, iTunes.

  • If you want a portable video player, just grab a recent Pocket PC and install PocketMVP [pocketmvp.com]
  • But there's a catch: the legality of the content such video players would use.

    What's wrong with viewing pr0n on a portable video player?

  • I went to Fry's in Seattle today.

    They had at least three MPEG4 players for bargain basement prices.

    What's the deal? Or is it just because it's Sony?

  • This already exists. (Score:4, Informative)

    by Civil_Disobedient ( 261825 ) on Sunday October 12, 2003 @03:01AM (#7193497)
    I haven't seen anyone mention the Archos AV320 Mediabox [mp3newswire.net].

    It has a 3.8" screen, plays MPEG4, MP3's, and records from any video source (encodes into MPEG4), including NTSC and PAL video.
  • What about all these Gigabytes (Gigibytes?) of uh... "home videos" everyone is supposed to have?
  • First off, there are plenty of portable DVD players on the market.

    Second, why would Sony and the MPAA do anything that might push down DVD sales? Hollywood is awash with DVD profits. Offering portable hard drives for motion-picture viewing is a direct threat to DVD sales. Hollywood won't allow this trend to happen like MP3 trading did to the music industry. Currently, the distribution channel for legal motion-picture digital sales is primitive, so a device like this would only encourage P2P movie tradi
  • focus instead on a portable video player.

    I've already got one. It's called the Sony VAIO laptop.
  • First, the potential customers aren't likely to care.

    Second, does anybody remember their history? The first hardware MP3 player (Diamond) was sued like hell, and won. Why should this be any different?
  • Is there a market for PVPs when even the cheapest laptops can play movies? I'd much rather buy a low-end laptop if I wanted the ability to play movies on the go (which I never have wanted, btw) than blow a bunch of cash on a machine that can only play movies. IMO, there is a very limited market for this.

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