As mentioned yesterday at Sony’s press conference, Sony teamed up with Warner, Fox, Lion’s Gate, Disney, MGM and others to bring video rental to the PS3. Jack Tretton then reminded us that video will be fully integrated into the PlayStation Store. The interface is setup for smooth and quick access to all of your favorite movies and TV shows by seperating the them by genre, studio, etc.
Many new movies are available through the PlayStation Store at the moment, approximately 85 are currently ready for download in standard definition. There will be more movies and TV shows giving you a choice between standard definition or high definition viewing, downloaded straight to your PS3 and becoming viewable within one minute of downloading.
According to PSN’s Eric Lempel, it takes about an hour to download one of the rented films. Price points vary too – $15 to purchase, $6 to rent in HD, and $4 to rent in SD. Another great feature is that all the AVC-format videos downloaded to PS3 can also be transferred to the PSP via a USB cable.
I tried out the service by downloading an episode of Mythbusters and purchasing Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls and I am very glad to say that the quality is top notch. Even just after a minute of downloading there never came a time where I had to pause the video for buffering, or saw a change in quality. It seems to me like Sony is taking the right direction with TV and movie distribution over the PS3 in a easy and seamless way.
