I'm rooting for sometime in June.

Since it's Blu-ray won't it take a while to stream it all? Compressed most likely.

How about old BR discs? Will they implement a way for doing that as well? Now if they could do this with normal DVDs, this would be a beast.

What's with Howard the duck there?

Is Howard the Duck coming to Blu-Ray? That would be hot!

This is what Sony should have done with the PSP/PS3 from day 1. I'm glad they're getting around to it.

I was originally hoping this would be a feature that could be used with any existing bluray but I'm much less interested if it's limited to specific bluray releases on which they include this smaller copy.

I'm with LX on this one. I was under the impression it would allow any BluRay disc to be transferred to the PSP. Big disappointment if the article reads true.

Way to ruin an awesome feature. I was kinda jealous (I'm currently a Wii/PSP/360 guy) but now, not so much.

Sooo, its happening then? thats pretty awesome, but if its only to going to be with specific releases then thats not so awesome

Product placement.

This is a really interesting feature that differentiates itself from the last generation of disc-media. Not to mention this makes the PS3+PSP combination much more enticing.

So it is just an additional file on the BR disc? I guess this is better than nothing. Hopefully Sony won't make it more difficult than it needs to be re: "the technology is currently under development".

If it works well and doesn't take 80 years to get on your psp, it's a revolutionary idea.

I bet new Blu-ray releases will include a psp "umd-image", so it would be just like buying an UMD, but instead you copy it to your memory card. This should take like 2-3 minutes to copy I guess.

The old releases could be converted on the fly, but it would probably take more time, like 5-15 minutes...

We will have to wait and see, but lets hope for the best. DVD conversion should also be possible, but they can just start with BD to increase BD sales. Once the buisness is up and running, add the DVD conversion abilities to allow for all the dusting DVD collections to be converted as well.

w00t, all i have to do is buy me a PS3!!!!

I'm curious what amount of space the encode will take on a Memory stick duo. Thankfully they've become quite reasonable on price lately. Hopefully my 4 gig will be enough for one movie, game saves, and a few other things.

-Niric

All very cool & I'll defintely be using this for my PS3 & PSP but could we have more new games as well please Sony...

Now if only there were more anime on Blu-ray's.

@DesmondHume: It's not actually that revolutionary, Fox has done something similar to this for some of their dvds. I think the Family Guy Blue Harvest disc includes a iPod format file.

Cool idea, nonetheless, but there is precedent for it already.

@GUNDAM-RX-78-2: they are coming. Gundam came out last month in Japan on Bluray. ADV is supposed to be putting out some stuff too. Bandai Visual has a lot out too.

@superbagman: Yeah, and Live Free or Die Hard has a digital copy also. I just wish they had this for previous Blu-Rays, like Spider-Man 3. Nevertheless, I'm lookin' forward to it though.

@OldManGaming: Yeah, it sounds like it. Personally, I almost prefer that. In theory it would be a lot easier to copy a file over to your MS than to have to screw around with converting it.

Actually, Hitman was just released on Blu-ray with a digital copy you could move to your iPod or PSP and watch ... I believe it was contained on a different disc, though.

I agree with the other comments -- most likely it will just be a UMD image that you copy over.

From what I've read, the PSP friendly-version is a conversion that is about 1 gig in size. Get yourself an 8 gig memory stick, and you could being enough movies with you for a long car ride.

They've said multiple times it is just an image that you copy over. So that should put an end to that part of the speculation.

I'd be willing to bet they are trying to come up with some DRM to lock the file to play only on the certain PSP you have linked with your PS3.

Because the techmology to put a movie file on a memory stick and play it isn't new at all.

@Dr.Chocobo:

You don't seem to understand what this feature is supposed to be. From what little I read it seems the Blu-Ray will have a *prepared small MPEG4 file that's just copied to the PSP. I don't think it'll do any transcoding or the like in realtime, since that's still considered illegal in some nations. Like it or not. I think remote play with ripped movies is a better deal. ;)

There is NO conversion of BD content happening....all it is is a PSP formated file that you are copying to your PSP.

SONY NEVER indicated otherwise.

As for the DRM 'lock', I think you'll see that being done with DRM DivX (PSP should be getting DivX support in 4.0).

@E-lai-e:

Even with the CBE transcoding takes a while! Have you ever tried transcoding 1080p on a quad-core PC? It takes more than a few minutes. =)

@TitillatedOcelot:

Like the PSP battery lasts that long.

Kinda cool as long as they don't charge extra for the digital copy, as they did with one DVD (can't remember which) several months ago. Then no one will buy it.

@TitillatedOcelot:
Oh snap! Apparently they don't have car adapters in Troll Land.

@TT: Good to Know.
@Drakron: For all you know he could have a car adapter plug im sure that can squeeze some extra life into a PSP.

@ca$h:

Or for that matter an extra battery. However playing media off the flash gives a huge boost to battery life, so not only is the guy a troll -- he's not even a smart troll. =)

That is not really the point, the PSP will run out of battery before those 8 movies are played under normal use ... its not a dig at the PSP battery because the UMD player adds a extra drain the memory stick alone will not have but still it will not last more that 12 hours.

"Battery swamping" and "charging" are excuses, the the last P of PSP means "Portable" ... if you are using that excuse to the PSP you can also apply then to cellphones.

Or use the new slysoft Anydvd to rip your BD to a max resolution mpeg4 file and copy it to the PSP..

I agree though that sony will just stick a mp4 image (or perhaps a divx if they start to support it) on the disk and lock it with drm, and then allow the newer firmwares to copy across and play this file..

@Drakron: Well it's a playstation and it's portable, am I right??

@psi88: Let me know how the PSP plays back a straight BR-D rip. (That's sarcasm, of course - it can't decode H.264 at anything resembling that bitrate.)

@Mongoosekun: Perhaps thats whats taking so much time? "currently under development" could mean "Squeeze out all the flops out of the cell"? 7 SPEs all working full speed ... hmm ok 6 then, since one is used by the OS, but since it's sony, they could use the 7th as well...

You could get one of the many free dvd-to-psp converters

@Mongoosekun: Agreed, less of a hassle. =P

I have two eleven hour bus rides at the end of April and I was wishing for it to be ready by then =(

Howard the duck on Blu ray? DO WANT!

If the copy is made to fit the psp screen wouldnt that mean it would not be as big as a normal screen blueray. Also, how much "HD" can you get on a the psp screen?

@JojoTheSlayer: Eating paint chips = bad.

It would be great if you can save these files to your PS3 hard drive and download them to your PSP. You can have your movie collection in your PS3 and just download which one you want to watch while you're traveling. It will definitely save you from buying a 8G pro duo.

what is the difference in image on the psp between blu-ray and dvd? Ok, how about this...What will the file size difference be?

anybody use this?
[www.dvdfab.com]

it would be sad if only certain bluray disks ever support this feature.

it would be nice if the technology enabled the ps3 to automatically shrink bluray disk files into a psp-ideal form.

(including menus, etc)

...truth is though...i don't see that happening. but it would be so perfect.

also.. what will the deal be with rental store blurays, can i go rent a bunch of blurays, and keep them on my psp?

Wonder how they'll keep the portable copy from floating around on the nets. Yes, people already put them there, but this is one less step pirates need to do!