SONY PICTURES PRESS RELEASE: Initial Slate Of Movie Titles For Playstation Portable (1 Viewer)

[Aaron Silverman]

Sony Pictures Home Entertainment To Release Initial Slate of Titles for PSP™ - (PlayStation® Portable) on April 19.

PSP™ Sets A New Standard for Entertainment-On-The-Go

Sony Pictures Home Entertainment (SPHE) will release four new titles on the Universal Media Disc (UMD™) video format that plays on the new PSP - (PlayStation® Portable) handheld entertainment system for the North American market. The announcement was made by Benjamin S. Feingold, President of SPHE.

The slate of action-packed titles includes XXX, Hellboy, Resident Evil 2 and Once Upon A Time in Mexico. These four titles will be released on April 19 with additional titles to be released monthly thereafter.

SPHE will also release UMD™ videos for PSP™ in Japan starting in April with Europe to follow.

PSP™ sets a new standard as the first truly integrated portable entertainment system designed to provide consumers with a comprehensive entertainment experience and to support multiple lifestyle applications, including games, music, movies, communication, and wireless networking. The UMD™ is a newly developed compact, high capacity optical format that can store up to 1.8 GB of digital data on a 60mm disc - or an entire feature film on a single UMD™ video.

"Sony Pictures Home Entertainment is proud to play a pioneering role in the introduction of this revolutionary new concept," said Mr. Feingold. "As the first fully integrated portable entertainment system, PSP™ will offer consumers an exciting new movie experience. We look forward to making movies on PSP™ a success with retailers throughout the world."

Movies on UMD™ will be produced in 16:9 widescreen aspect ratio and encoded using advanced AVC compression, which provides the type of picture quality consumers have come to expect from SPHE DVDs. For added protection, a lightweight disc sleeve is also utilized, along with advanced encryption technology for content security.

About PSP™ (PlayStation® Portable)
PSP™ (PlayStation® Portable) is a new portable entertainment system from Sony Computer Entertainment that allows users to enjoy 3D games, high-quality full-motion video, and high-fidelity stereo audio. With graphics rendering capability comparable to that of PlayStation®2, PSP features a 4.3 inch widescreen, high-resolution TFT display. PSP also adopts a newly developed compact but high-capacity (1.8GB) optical disc, Universal Media Disc (UMD™), as its storage medium. With a wide range of accessories and connectivity options, including Memory Stick Duo, USB 2.0, IR port and WiFi wireless LAN, PSP™ is the new entertainment platform from PlayStation. For more information on PSP™, visit Sony Computer Entertainment America on the Web at www.us.playstation.com.

 

[PeterMano]

I'll be buying a psp at launch, but mainly for the games. I'm still unclear at to whether umd will support the features we're used to do on dvd like scene selection for example and your standard dvd menus. I don't even know what sound formats are even supported off umd. No pricing either.

Sony is including a copy of spiderman 2 with the psp when it launches, so that will probably tell me what the format is capable of, what it can and can't do. Either way, they better be cheap, like $10 to $15 at the max, otherwise, I think they'll be a tough sell.

I wouldn't mind Hellboy, but the others I can live without.

 

[Amy Mormino]

If this version had a battery that could last more than a few hours without a recharge, I would seriously consider buying this. I travel a lot (I'm in South Korea at the moment) and would really welcome a powerful and convenient game/DVD player hybrid.

 

[Matt Thompson]

I'll stick with my DS, thanks.

 

[Kevin Deselms]

I think it's kind of a lamebrain idea. I'm not tempted to re-buy movies I already bought on DVD, so I can have them for a little tiny PSP screen. I have a 10.6" portable laptop that does a much better job, and I don't have to buy the same flick twice.

 

[Chad Ferguson]

COuld someone tell me the release date for Advent Children. I thought it was pushed back from winter2004 so it could be a launch title for the PSP?

 

[Kain_C]

Sure, if you prefer mostly children's games and low quality graphics and limited functionality. My store hasn't sold a DS in probably weeks. I don't expect it to go far at all.

Me, I prefer a large(for a handheld) 16x9 display able to produce near PS2 graphics as well as impressive multimedia capabilities like MP3 and movie playback as well as a picture viewer and near limitless potential like web browsing, email, word processing, etc. Plus with about 27 titles available at launch, it will have more games available initially than the DS has now, nearly 3 months after it's release! So my choice is easy; PSP all the way!

 

[PeterMano]

Guys need to take system wars talk to another board on another forum. We don't need a psp vs. ds bash fest.

I thought sony might release some music videos initially instead. I don't know about holding a portable and watching a two hour flick. But, checking out some music videos or some family guy episodes on the commuter train would be kind of nice.

Portables lend themselves to shorter periods of play. Two hour movies, while cool technically don't strike me as that practical for a little handheld.

 

[Mike Wadkins]

they should look better than dvd as they are made for the psp screen and not the many diff sizes well all have of tv at home

 

[Chris Farmer]

Except the importance isn't the size Mike, it's the resolution. With the exception of widescreen and/or HD displays (and even there the resolutiosn are standardized with specific, definite targets), TVs have the exact same number of pixels from one model to the next. A bigger screen just has larger pixels, not more of them. So I don't expect image quality to improve at all. In fact, given the lower resolution of a PSP compared to a TV, image quality will be worse.

For me, the PSP has intrigue as a gaming system, and I may well get one for that, but as a portable video device, no thanks. I have no desire to re=buy my movie catalog just so I can use it on a glorified Gameboy when my laptop has a bigger screen and plays all the DVDs I already have. Leave the PSP for the games.

 

[Kain_C]

Why do that when you can put a copy of a DVD THAT YOU OWN ALREADY onto a memory stick? I am involved with independent filmmaking and being able to port my movies around and exhibit them on a very nice high quality 4 inch screen is very appealing to me.

 

[Chris Farmer]

How do I do that Kain? Thanks to the wonders of the DMCA any attempt to take the video file of a movie I've legally purchased and transfer it to another medium for my own personal use is now considered to be breaking an encryption scheme and is a federal offense. Even if I myself wouldn't get caught, who wants to run afoul of the MPAA by trying to sell software to let me do that? Shoot, you saw how they cracked down on a guy who made software simply for backing up you DVDs, much less extracting the A/V information out for transfer to another device.

 

[Matt Thompson]

Oh wait, PSP plays GameBoy Advance games, too?

The fact that DS can product SNES-quality games is easily the deciding factor for me. To this day, a good majority of Super Nintendo/Sega Genesis games are completely more enjoyable than the crap that comes down the pipeline for PS2, Xbox, and GameCube.

In the end, I don't care about graphics. I want fun games, and DS can already play a few hundred of them. Other people can line up for Sony's $249 bomb. I'll never trust a company that tells its customers to screw off after it's been revealed they released a defective product.