Does Blu-ray-PSP link mean the end of UMD movies?
Who'll want the format when we're able to squirt full movies from PS3 to PSP for free
During its CES press conference, the Blu-ray Association was plenty bullish about the success of its disc format, but inbetween the swipes at HD-DVD, there were some significant announcements about how the technology - which continues to be aggressively pushed by Sony, amongst others - will do much more than allow movie studios to store longer, high-quality content.
The key element in this respect is BD-Live. This is a framework which, for want of a better description, enables Blu-ray content to be smart in terms of using networking features such as pulling down extras from the internet, providing a distribution channel to other devices, and for other interactivity.
The simplest example highlighted by David Bishop, president worldwide for Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, was the ability to download trailers from the internet by selecting them off a menu from within a Blu-ray movie.
Much more interesting in terms of gaming though was the news that if you put an enabled Blu-ray movie in your PlayStation 3, you'd be able to beam a complete version of that movie onto your PSP (space on your Memory Stick Duo allowing).
No launch date was provided for this, nor was the process explained in detail, but it seems it will only work when a separate PSP-compatible version of the movie is included on the disc, rather than your PS3 acting as server and compressing the movie on-the-fly.
For this reason, movie studios will have to actively support the feature when they are mastering their Blu-ray discs, rather than it coming for free on all Blu-ray discs. There's also the possibility Sony might charge a licensing fee but as both Blu-ray players and the PSP support the standard H.264/AVC video codec, there shouldn't be any technical reasons for this, and terms of the boost it could provide both PS3 and PSP sales, it would seem an unlikely move on Sony's part.
But that's not all BD-Live will enable. "You'll see things like multiplayer gaming, ringtones delivered to the consumer, and it'll really enliven and enrichen the experience round Blu-ray," Bishop said of the wider, non-PS3-specific features of BD-Live, according to Tech Digest.
Of course, what will be really interesting about the PS3-PSP link is the effect it will have on Sony's (and more importantly other studios') support for the UMD format. Combined with the news Sony's soon releasing a 16GB Memory Stick Duo, this seems to be the beginning of the end for UMD, at least as a format for movies.
