SlashGear Japan
Lately large entertainment companies have been pushing virtual copies of their movies for portable media players (PMP) such as Apple’s iPod Touch. Sony has announced another way that they are going to distribute these virtual copies to consumers.
Sony will be releasing digital copies of movies and albums on USB flash drives. Everyone could use a flash drive or two but just how many is to many? Michael Jackson fans can pickup the 25th Anniversary of the thriller album for only $19.99, or feature films for $29.99 each. Sony has not commented on whether or not there will be any added special features to these titles.
Other than portability, I don’t see why people would pay $29 for a movie that is on a USB flash drive when they can pay the same amount for a Blu-ray copy and then later copy it to the drive if they wish. As for music titles it just simply wont work. Downloading music from iTunes is just far too easy to do these days. We are sure that for $19 most people would rather have the physical CD rather than a USB drive.
One Response to “Sony releasing movies and music on USB flash drives”
Pax December 16, 2008
Off topic but would love to see all future video and mp3 players with USB ports and support for the most common audio/video formats (mp3, wma, avi, mpg, divx, etc) – plus most of the graphic formats. A two USB system would have one port for the data and the other for… a multimedia OS.
Of course, this would place control of media files back into the hands of consumers (tape cassettes, VHS) so it’s not likely to happen anytime soon.
Still… Sony may inadvertently be starting a trend here that an ‘open’ system built around Linux could easily bring to market.
My work is done here… seed planted;-)
Neutral