AfterDawn: News

Sony to release movies for PSP

Sony announced today that it plans to launch four movie titles in UMD format, used by the Sony's hand-held PSP console and one additional movie to be bundled with the PSP console once it will be released in the United States.

The movie line-up includes titles produced by Sony's movie unit, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment. Movies that are about to be released on 19th of April are Hellboy, XXX, Resident Evil 2 and Once Upon A Time in Mexico. The movie that will ship bundled with the American version of the PSP will be Spider-Man 2.



Sony will use AVC as its video encoding format for the movies and all movies will use 16:9 aspect ratio. Unfortunately the movies will use "advanced copy protection mechanism" in order to block unauthorized copying of the movies. Pricing of the movies remains a mystery, but Sony has promised to start selling UMD movies also in Japan in April with Europe to follow later.

Source: Sony's press release

Written by: Petteri Pyyny @ 11 Feb 2005 13:06

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• 12 comments

• philipman

  How advanced is this copy right protection. Whould there be any way to copy these discs because that would be kool.

  11.2.2005 15:12 #1

• MXGzX

  ....people don't know yet
  
  are there even any movies in japan for psp? I don't think so

  11.2.2005 16:34 #2

• punx777

  im sure these will be copyable, sony is going to release the UMD format still right?

  11.2.2005 20:18 #3

• rdevanat

  What is meant by this:
  
  "Unfortunately the movies will use "advanced copy protection mechanism" in order to block unauthorized copying of the movies". Basically it is saying it is rather unfortunate unauthorised copying is not possible with the advanced copyright. Whats unfortunate about it? Isnt thatw hat Sony wants!!!

  11.2.2005 20:32 #4

• dRD

  rdevanat: Having a copy protection on movies/CDs/whatever:
  
  a) restricts "fair use rights" available in most countries
  
  b) wastes consumers' money, as companies spend millions -- if not billions -- for these schemes despite the fact that they will get cracked eventually anyway. And obviously all development costs are always added to the prices that consumers pay for those items.

  11.2.2005 22:35 #5

• daemonzx6

  haha, they will probably use arccos or something else that AnyDVD can crack before anybody ever notices the protection is in place.

  12.2.2005 15:50 #6

• SiD_UK

  There is already a conversion tool to convert movies onto a memory card to be watched on the PSP, I have an imported version and it works a cracker :P

  13.2.2005 05:30 #7

• neewbie

  People will crack it. :-)

  14.2.2005 17:37 #8

• CHADSR

  There is the conversion software which may work since you can hook up your psp to your pc and transfer data to your memory card but only time will tell.

  20.2.2005 13:55 #9

• JAYO1980

  i cant copy troy or gone in 60 seconds with any software any ideas

  20.2.2005 19:21 #10

• JAYO1980

  i tried DVD Decrypter the newest one can figure out how to up date it it wont says timed out. i tried shrink x copy everything

  20.2.2005 19:28 #11

• slick21

  According to [ http://sonypsp.tblog.com ] and IGN theres going to be PSP with a Harddrive in,
  So pirateing movies will be no big deal for criminals.
  lol
  And 50Gigs would be alot of movies.
  Like a hundred or sumthin :-P

  27.2.2005 10:15 #12