last100 » Sony

BBC iPlayer on PS3 gets a makeover, higher quality video and 1080p UI

Steve O'Hear — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 13:21:04 +0000

The version of iPlayer optimized for the PlayStation 3 has been given a major update that delivers improved video quality and a User Interface designed for High Definition televisions that operate up to 1080p.

That explains why Sony’s recent advertising blitz for the games console is pushing the Beeb’s UK-only TV catch-up service pretty hard, along with the company’s own video download service that only recently launched this side of the pond.

Writing on the broadcaster’s official ‘Internet’ blog, the BBC’s Anthony Rose explains that the latest PS3 firmware update offers improved Flash player support, which not only enables H.264 playback but also takes advantage of hardware acceleration when in full screen mode. The result, says Rose, is that the BBC is now able to provide “an iPlayer on PS3 with brilliant video quality – almost as good as broadcast television!”.

The newest PS3 firmware also sees iPlayer appear an an option directly within the game console’s cross-media bar (see screenshot above), “giving easy one-click access”.

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Sony PlayStation video store coming to the UK, France, Germany and Spain this November

Steve O'Hear — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 11:57:26 +0000

While the U.S. version launched all the way back in July 08, it’s been a long wait for users across the pond. Along with announcing a new slimmer version of the PS3 and a bunch of other service enhancements, yesterday Sony revealed that the PlayStation video store will be opening its doors to parts of Europe from November this year.

From gamesindusty.biz:

Film companies Lionsgate, Paramount, MGM, Walt Disney, Fox, Universal and Warner Bros have been signed up by Sony, which will result in the delivery of “hundreds of movies straight to your PS3 and PSP,” Sony’s Andrew House has confirmed at the Gamescom Sony press conference in Cologne. These films will be purchasable using the usual wallet system, and the store will be rolled out in other territories throughout 2010.

While Sony will get there in the end — the company was already playing catchup in the games console delivered online video space even in the U.S. — the hold up is likely to be the usual issue of content licensing. Striking deals in one territory doesn’t guarantee speedy success in another.

In related news, Sony also announced that in the UK, the version of the BBC’s iPlayer TV catchup service for the PlayStation 3 will be promoted through the console’s ‘What’s new’ section being introduced as part of a new firmware update.

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VidZone, Sony PS3’s on-demand music video service, is a hit with… record labels

Steve O'Hear — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 12:30:58 +0000

I was so underwhelmed with VidZone, the PlayStation 3’s on-demand music video service, that I couldn’t bring myself to review it. The UI is clunky and videos stream in a 4:3 aspect ratio, even for recent releases, so that they don’t fill up the whole screen on my High Def telly.

However, it seems that I’m in the minority, if the company behind VidZone is to be believed. The service is a hit with the major record labels, meaning that it’s presumably resonating with consumers too, its co-founders tell GamesIndustry.biz.

After starting off by having to persuade the major labels to license their music videos to the service, VidZone says that the music industry is now knocking at their door.

“In terms of the music we’re receiving for the service we’re getting offered a number of world premiers of music videos ahead of MTV, MSN or Yahoo,” says Louisa Jackson, director of marketing for VidZone.

“We had to approach the major record labels to begin with but now it’s a case of labels coming back to us and saying ‘okay, how can you lead the music video strategy for the new music release of our artists?’. Which is really exciting because we’ve gone from watching a music video on TV to watching online, to a console where you’re watching both online and in a broadcast environment simultaneously.”

VidZone’s catalog has reached 13,000 music videos, according to the company, and that future upgrades planned include better search and proper support for wide screen TVs. On that note, perhaps I’ll give VidZone a second chance.

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Why Sony is embracing the ‘open’ ePub eBook standard (Hint: Amazon)

Steve O'Hear — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 15:08:19 +0000

I’ve argued before that with regards to eBooks and the Kindle, Amazon doesn’t view itself as a hardware company. Unlike the iTunes ecosystem designed to shift more iPods and iPhones, for Amazon it’s actually about selling digital content — the eBooks themselves — as demonstrated by the release of the iPhone ‘Kindle’ eBook reader and the company’s work-around to keep Apple away from any iPhone-generated eBook revenue.

The Kindle hardware exists to kick start and accelerate the uptake of eBooks, and as well as creating Kindle reader software for other mobile platforms, similar to what the company has already done on the iPhone, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Amazon one day license its Kindle platform to competing hardware eBook readers. As I said, it’s clearly about shifting content, and to achieve this, owning the eBook ’standard’ and therefore default store.

To do this Amazon knows it has to create the best eBook reading experience and offer the largest catalog. And it’s arguably leading on both these counts already, in the US at least. Publishers know it. Consumers know it. And Sony – and other competing eBook hardware makers – know it. Hence Sony’s decision to ditch its own proprietary eBook format going forward and support the more open and industry-backed ePub standard.

If Sony can’t stop Amazon owning the eBook standard on its own, then embracing an open format along with other players in the market seems like the best way to prevent the online retailer becoming the dominant force in the e-publishing industry, as Apple has done in the digital music industry, able to dictate prices and control distribution. Something that not only Sony and other hardware makers but publishers across the board are right to be scared of.

And then there’s Apple and that rumored iTablet, eBook reading capability and all.

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Sony considering PSP game rental and music download services

Steve O'Hear — Thu, 21 May 2009 16:34:36 +0000

It’s looks like Sony may finally be getting serious about its download service for the PlayStation Portable (PSP), with the company considering a subscription-based game rental offering and a la carte music downloads akin to the iTunes Store.

The computer games blog Joystiq reports on a survey being carried out by Sony soliciting consumer apatite for an on-demand gaming service whereby PSP owners would pay a monthly fee to access a set number of titles on a rental basis.

You are now going to see a series of different possible rental download services which could be developed by PlayStation. Each service described will provide access to an extensive existing catalogue of PSP games that can be downloaded.

The service will enable you to download a fixed number of games during your subscription period (the subscription might renew weekly, monthly, or some other period), you will be able to change the games you have chosen for the download once your subscription term renews. At launch there will be an extensive catalogue of games to choose from, with more titles being added to the catalogue each month.

Meanwhile, in an unrelated report from CNET, Sony is said to be in talks with at least some of the major record labels about launching a music download service for the PSP (and possibly, PlayStation 3?). If the company does so, it’s likely that the service will embrace an industry standard format, such as the ubiquitous MP3 or AAC, without the use of DRM. This would be inline with both the music industry trend of abandoning copy-protection technology for a la carte downloads, and recent comments from Sony’s CEO Howard Stringer that moving forward the company plans to take a more open approach:

“If we had gone with open technology from the start, I think we probably would have beaten Apple,” Stringer told Nikkei Electronics Asia recently. “Sony hasn’t taken open technology very seriously in the past. Its Connect music download service was a failure. It was based on OpenMG, a proprietary digital rights management (DRM) technology. At the time, we thought we would make more money that way than with open technology, because we could manage the customers and their downloads.

“This approach, however, created a problem,” Stringer said. “Customers couldn’t download music from any Web sites except those that contracted with Sony.”

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One more thing: Flip Mino HD playback on the PlayStation 3

Steve O'Hear — Thu, 14 May 2009 14:52:54 +0000

Sony PS3 and Flip Mino HD

Since publishing my hands-on review of the Flip Mino HD ‘point and shoot’ camcorder, I’ve discovered a really neat feature: the ability to play High Definition video shot on the Mino on a PlayStation 3, directly from the camera itself.

Simply plug the device into one of the PS3’s USB ports via the Mino HD’s flip out USB connector, and any videos stored on the camera show up in the PlayStation’s XMB User Interface under ‘Video’. From there it’s just a case of selecting the video you want to watch and hitting play. No need to worry about cables, networking or transferring files to the PS3 beforehand. Instead, you can pretty much instantly watch your home made movies on your High Def TV via the PS3 (unedited of course, unless you’ve saved your final edit back onto the camera’s internal flash drive).

Hat tip: I discovered this feature after talking to a PR rep from Western Digital who make their own High Def media player. Apparently, the Mino HD and the WD TV HD Media Player (review coming soon) also play nicely together.

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Rumor: New PlayStation Portable betting on Sony PSP App Store

Steve O'Hear — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 16:12:56 +0000

New PSP mock-up (credit: 1UP.com)

If reports are to be believed, a new version of Sony’s PlayStation Portable (PSP) will ditch the handheld games console’s UMD disc drive in favor of 8GB or 16GB of internal storage. Games would then need to be purchased as downloads rather than housed on physical media, likely locking the PSP’s future software eco-system to Sony’s equivalent of Apple’s iPhone App Store.

From gaming site 1UP:

… since the UMD is going away, Sony will have over 100 classic and new PSP titles available for download at launch (Gran Turismo Mobile is said to be one of the premier launch titles). As for the hardware itself, the redesign will include a d-pad, analog nub, and face buttons as part of a sliding unit sticking out below the screen (as seen in our mockup above).

Furthermore, 1UP speculates that the new PSP could build on features found in Sony’s Mylo 2 Internet device, a product that hasn’t exactly set the world on fire. “This could provide an 800×480 pixel touch screen for the system, as well as a camera on the system’s backside”, suggest the site.

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Nokia’s DLNA goodness – N85 to PS3 streaming

Steve O'Hear — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 17:35:40 +0000

A much overlooked feature of Nokia’s Nseries smartphones is their ability to share media with other DLNA-certified devices. In fact, DLNA certification in general is marketed very poorly considering that it goes someway to reaching the holy grail of home media whereby various devices – computers, cellphones, games consoles, hard drives, media streamers and other hardware – can all play nicely together to share and stream media around the home. That’s the aim anyway, although in practice not only is DLNA’s messaging underwhelming, but issues such as copyprotection and varying support for different file formats have held back the technology, which, as I’ve previously noted, offers so much promise. Anyway, back to Nokia.

This afternoon I decided to put the N85’s DLNA support to the test by attempting to stream music, photos and videos stored on the phone to a PlayStation 3. And, perhaps surprisingly, it was all pretty straight forward.

I simply fired up Nokia’s ‘Home media’ application (located in the tools > connectivity folder) and toggled the phone to “visible” so that any DLNA certified device on the same local area network could now connect to the N85 (over WiFi), including my PlayStation 3. After which a Nokia icon popped up in the PS3’s XrossMediaBar Interface. I then needed to tell the N85 which files to make ‘public’; in this instance that would include all music, photos and videos stored on the phone.

After going through these two steps, I was able to browse to the music, photos and video folders respectively on the PlayStation 3 via the Nokia icon labeled N85 (see above screen shot) and stream any of the phone’s media onto my widescreen TV, with one caveat. Although both photos and videos that I’d shot on the N85 played back fine (the PS3 has good support for MPEG4 video, for example), as did MP3 and AAC audio, copyprotected content – a BBC TV show that I’d downloaded via the N85’s iPlayer application- refused to stream.

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Google helps add 500,000 public domain eBooks to Sony Reader store

Steve O'Hear — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 18:38:59 +0000

Not sure if this is such a big deal but owners of Sony’s Reader – which includes my dad – can now access over half a million public domain books via the company’s eBook store, courtesy of a new partnership with Google Book Search.

Titles include an “extensive list of traditional favorites”, according to the joint press release, such as “The Awakening,” “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court,” and “Black Beauty”, along with Jane Austin’s “Sense and Sensibility” and “Emma.”

In their statements both Google and Sony were keen to tout the partnership as testament to their ‘openness’, a direct dig at Amazon’s Kindle, which uses a proprietary eBook format compared to the Reader’s support for the standards-based ePub.

However, as paidContent notes, the real picture isn’t quite as clear cut. Prior to today’s announcement, eBooks downloaded from Google Book Search either as text files or PDFs could already be transferred to and read on both the Reader and Kindle, albeit with the process on Sony’s device being a lot less cumbersome. What’s changed today is that by supporting the ePub format and adding its catalog to Sony’s own eBook store, Google just made it even more user-friendly and, for the time being at least, makes access to free public domain content – if you’re into that kind of thing – a key selling point for Reader over Kindle.

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Sony’s eBook reader – the numbers are in

Steve O'Hear — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 17:24:05 +0000

While Amazon remains deafeningly silent over how many Kindles it has sold – except to say that new orders won’t be fulfilled for the next eleven to thirteen weeks – Sony, its main competitor in the eBook reader space, isn’t being so shy.

Claiming to have exceeded the company’s own forecasts, Sony says it sold 300,000 units of its Sony Reader device since its October 2006 launch (WSJ). Interestingly, however, Forrester Research estimates that 400,000 Kindles have sold since its launch in November 2007, which, if true, means that Amazon has done considerably better in a much shorter amount of time, possibly due to better marketing — it’s hard to beat the Amazon brand and e-store when it comes to selling anything book-related.

Although both sets of numbers are nothing to be scoffed at, it doesn’t yet amount to an ‘iPod moment’, notes paidContent. Apple sold 1.3 million units of its music player in the first two years, even if it took considerably longer for the iPod to really go mainstream.

Talking of mainstream, last week my Dad requested a Sony Reader for Christmas after trying out a colleague’s. If that’s any indication, perhaps eBook readers could reach a tipping point sooner than we think?

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Sony continues to plug along, introducing promising third-generation eBook reader

Daniel Langendorf — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 05:44:55 +0000

Sony announced its third-generation electronic book reader this week at the same time it appears that the iPhone has overtaken the Kindle as the industry’s No. 1 reader.

Stanza, a book-reading application available through Apple’s App Store, has been downloaded more than 395,000 times and continues to be installed at an average rate of 5,000 copies a day, according its developer Lexcycle [via Forbes].

Forbes notes than Citigroup has estimated that Amazon will sell around 380,000 Kindles in 2008, making the iPhone — at least in loosely-defined terms — the No. 1 eBook device. Titles available for Stanza are mostly public domain, not best-sellers.

Sony, which entered the eBook market long before Amazon or Apple (through third-party developers), isn’t expected to sell nearly as many Readers as Kindles or approach as many users as Stanza on the iPhone. Even so, with its third-generation Reader Sony continues to plug along and, in nearly every respect, has the best eBook device.

Without actually seeing and using the device, it’s hard to say if the new Sony Reader will live up to its specs and is worth $400, but the improvements seem substantial with a few exceptions.

Substantial improvements

The Reader uses a new touch screen, perhaps the biggest improvement; readers can “swipe” page-turning instead of pressing buttons — annoying on the Kindle, acceptable on the current Sony device. It’s not unlike gestures on the iPhone.

Readers can annotate and highlight text with a finger or stylus and save notes for future reading — possibly a great enhancement and differentiator, depending on its execution.

The Reader includes an important feature that has been missing from electronic book devices: a built-in LED that illuminates text in dark settings, which could come in handy when reading in bed.

Inconsequential improvements

The Reader uses the same E-Ink technology that Sony and Amazon currently use on their readers, but it’s still not color.

The display refreshes slightly faster than the previous generation, but its screen refresh wasn’t that bad to begin with.

The Reader is slightly smaller but, again, its size wasn’t much of an issue unless Sony’s goal is to shrink its Readers to the size of iPhones.

Sony continues to improve the aesthetics of the Reader — this one sports an all-black finish with textured accents that (testers say) feels comfortable in the hand — but, then again, the last Reader wasn’t all that bad-looking (and certainly a heck of a lot more attractive than the Kindle).

(Speaking of the Kindle, pictures of the second-generation device has been leaked — see also Boy Genius Report). It’s doubtful Amazon’s eBook reader will be available before Christmas.)

No improvement

The biggest disappointment is that the Sony Reader still does not have cellular or Wi-Fi connectivity, which is the main advantage the Kindle holds. Sony has promised this functionality “sometime in the near future,” but when?

The omission of wireless connectivity will continue to hurt Sony in its quest against Amazon in the eBook market. “Kindle can’t really be threatened because it’s the only one with a wireless store built into it, and that’s an amazing convenience,” Forrester Research analyst James McQuivey told Forbes. “The Sony Reader has always been a good device. But without the critical content piece, an eBook is just a bunch of wires and a screen.”

The $400 price tag is also a disappointment. It will cost $40 more than the Kindle and $100 more than the current Sony Reader.

In the end: tepid applause

The other big advantage the Kindle enjoys is superior access to eBook content through Amazon’s Website. Even so, Sony says it plans to have 100,000 titles available by the holidays and it will revamp its much maligned online bookstore in the next month.

Ever so slowly, Sony is improving its Reader, the eBook-reading experience (it’s open to more eBook formats and standards than the Kindle), and its commitment to the electronic book market. If Sony incorporates wireless into a future Reader, look out Kindle.

Photo credits: Boy Genius Report and Wired

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Taking aim at Apple and Sony, Nintendo announces new DSi portable media device

Daniel Langendorf — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 07:55:46 +0000

Meet the Nintendo DSi.

As expected, Nintendo announced its latest portable gaming device, dubbed the DSi, at its fall press conference. The DSi is not a game-only device, however, as it includes browsing capabilities, Wi-Fi, a 3-megapixel camera, and other enhancements that bring it more in line with Apple’s iPod Touch and iPhone and Sony’s PlayStation Portable products. In fact, the DSi is not considered a replacement for the current DS Lite line but a complement, or “third platform.”

The juicy DSi details, brought to us by the folks at Kotaku, include:

dual touchscreens
the screens are 17 percent larger (3.25 inches)
the device will be 12 percent thinner because it doesn’t have a Game Boy Advance cartridge slot
an external 3 megapixel camera
a front-facing camera located on the hinge
an SD slot and internal storage
“audio enhancements” giving players the ability to listen to MP3s, adjust pitch, and playback
the DSi also will feature a built-in browser and the DSi shop, which will sell content through Wi-Fi networks
DSi owners will be able to use free “Nintendo Zone” hotspots in Japanese McDonald’s for Wi-Fi connections
the DSi will be available in black and white models in Japan on Nov. 1 for $178 US; it will arrive in the U.S. early next year

Engadget has put together an image gallery for the new DSi.

The Nintendo DSi is clearly a response to the changing portable game device market, which is being influenced by Apple’s iPod Touch and iPhone and devices running Google’s mobile operating system, Android, when they become available.

Joystiq has assembled a spec comparison for the DSi, Sony’s PSP 3000, and the iPod Touch/iPhone.

Photo credits: Kotaku and Joystiq

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