PSP films on Mem Stick Duo

By Tom Bramwell Published 13 July, 2006

Free film with 1GB or 2GB.

Sony has come up with another way of encouraging consumers to buy 1GB and 2GB Memory Stick Duos - and has, in the process, demonstrated how PSP movies can be distributed in rights-managed digital format without resorting to UMD discs.

The Memory Stick Entertainment Pack consists of a 1GB or a 2GB Memory Stick Duo - which will work in the PSP as well as Cybershot cameras, Handycam camcorders and Sony Ericsson mobile phones - along with a DVD that you can use to unlock one of four PSP-formatted Sony films.

Once you've inserted the disc into your PC, you can input the unlock code that comes with the Pack, and select one of four films - Hitch, SWAT, The Grudge and XXX: State of the Union - to transfer to the Memory Stick Duo for playback on the PSP. Sony says this will be the only way to watch them.

Although more focused on the Memory Stick Duo than the actual film content, this is still fairly new ground for Sony, which has witnessed sales of films on UMD briefly spark and then dwindle since the handheld's launch.

A spokesperson for Sony UK was not able to immediately available to confirm European plans for the Memory Stick Entertainment Pack.

However the Packs will be available in the US next month for about $60 and $100 respectively for the 1GB and 2GB bundles.

Picture of Tom.

About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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Comments (27) Latest comment 6 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • tonynibbles #1 6 years ago

    I got my 4Gb the other week.
    I've got about 800Mb of photos, Spaced Series 2 and Anchorman on there, and just over 2Gb of music with space spare aswell.

    Give it a few months and I'll upgrade to teh 8Gb win.

  • York #2 6 years ago

    They are soooo expensive :(

  • Zero Beat #3 6 years ago

    If the films are as high quality as the UMD video equivalents this is an excellent idea.

  • Tomo #4 6 years ago

    I've got a 2GB one and they're not very expensive now, in my view. It's easily my best buy for the PSP. Running games at 333 MHz and watching things on my PSP is awesome.

  • El_MUERkO #5 6 years ago

    i'll pick up a 4gig in a few months and move the 1gig from my psp into a 750i :)

  • symmetry #6 6 years ago

    Oh well at least they decided to put some quality films on the DVD...

    And it's a pity that memorysticks are twice as expensive as other flash cards. The cheapest 4GB MS-DUO I've found is £125, while a 4GB SD is £60.

  • tonynibbles #7 6 years ago

    You can pick up a 2Gb on ebay For £25 these days.

    Lik Sang sell 4Gb for £98 atm

  • York #8 6 years ago

    I'm just hoping the price in regular online stores drops to something closer to £20 by the time the 4GB hits Europe.

    Anything over £20 is crazy money :)

  • symmetry #9 6 years ago

    That Lik-Sang one isn't from Europe so you'd have to pay 17.5% duty on it which makes it about £115 before postage costs.

    Those ebay ones seem a bargin though, one 2 GB stick just went for £30 (including all postage costs).

  • #10 6 years ago

    Sony has come up with another way of encouraging consumers to buy 1GB and 2GB Memory Stick Duos - and has, in the process, demonstrated how PSP movies can be distributed in rights-managed digital format without resorting to UMD discs.

    Could Mem Stick games and a solid-state PSP be further down in the pipeline?

  • MisterFalseName #11 6 years ago

    Ebay is filled with counterfeit memory sticks, though - which is why I paid about double that for a 2gb stick for the piece of mind. :)

  • drumbaby #12 6 years ago

    I'm surprised (well, kinda) that Sony haven't trialled UMDs at a far more sensible price, rather than seemingly moving away from them altogether for flicks.

  • mingster #13 6 years ago

    Unfortunately for SOny UMD's have bombed and most larger retailers have stopped stocking them.

    Sony's track record for new mediums is poor. Betamax, minidisc are two that spring to mind.
    I wonder whether blueray format will be the next Betamax?

  • Gurgeh #14 6 years ago

    "I wonder whether blueray format will be the next Betamax?"

    Too early to tell... although it's looking like it's also too early for Blu-Ray altogther:

    "the delays keep coming for Sony's Blu-ray high-definition DVD system. China's Commercial Times newspaper is reporting that Sony's production facilities have not been able to meet the demand for the diode that generates the blue laser at the heart of the HD system. Both Sony's own plants and those of Japan's Nichia Corp., the only two suppliers of the diodes, have been plagued by production problems, the newspaper said. The supply problem, it observed, could not only delay production of Blu-ray DVD players for Sony and other manufacturers, but could also delay the release of PlayStation 3 models, now scheduled for November."

    - 11th July, [link url=http://www. imdb.com/news/sb/2006-07-11/#3
    ]http://www. imdb.com/news/sb/2006-07-11/#3
    [/link]

    Rather than a delay expect a shortage. You'd expect HDDVD players to have the same shortages but nothing has been reported yet.

    On a related note, Cell yields are still very low:

    "With a chip like the Cell processor, you’re lucky to get 10 or 20 percent [yield]"

    - presumably on all 8 cores working, as opposed to the 7 needed for PS3 grade chips.

    http://ww w.reed-electronics.com/electron...

  • peterfll #15 6 years ago

    What a wonderful selection of films to pick. Of course, depends on the target audience, and for one won't resort to making judgements.... for once.

    Also, the only way to watch these films? Eh? Just rip the DVDs to a hard drive using one of the many freeware tools that does the job and then format it for the PSP. Still too much faffing around for a lot of people methinks......

  • Razzajazz #16 6 years ago

    I can't belive Sony thought UMD films were actually going to work at that price! There's no reason any UMD film should cost more than £5. If UMD's cost almost the same as a normal DVD, anyone have any idea how much a Blu-Ray film will cost? Prolly better off buying my own goddamn cinema!

  • prettyboytim #17 6 years ago

    I wonder if they'll be full resolution, unlike the crippled resolution memory stick video has been limited so far?

  • Syrette #18 6 years ago

    They won't work in the latest Sony Ericsson phones actually. For that you need the new Memory Stick M2 or whatever it's called.

  • chupachups #19 6 years ago

    --Could Mem Stick games and a solid-state PSP be further down in the pipeline?--

    There'd be a danger of increased piracy if games came on a standard format like memory stick.

    The most pirate-resistent games systems have always steered clear of any standard formats, and pirated cartridges were always far rarer than pirated CDs.

    An alternative would be for Sony to create a PSP-only memory card format, which is pretty much what Nintendo did for their DS.

  • Zero Beat #20 6 years ago

    Gamespot - "The movies will play in [320x240] pixel resolution, lower than the 480x272 pixel resolution PSPs are capable of."

    Utter bollocks.

  • BLACKSHEEP #21 6 years ago

    QVGA??? well guess Sony don't want to upset their precious UMD Film market ;)

    To be honest, best to get a copy of their PSP suite which can convert DVD films to the UMD 480x272 standard if you don't mind the long conversion times!!!

  • regmund #22 6 years ago

    that movie offer makes me want to rush out right now, buy a psp and throw my ds in the bin :-P

  • Peckmore #23 6 years ago

    "Give it a few months and I'll upgrade to teh 8Gb win. "

    Afraid not. The maximum the PSP can support is 4GB. I read a review of the Datel PSP Hard Drive (which was basically a Memory Stick to Compact Flash converter and a 4GB Microdrive) and they swapped the drive out for other compact flash media. The PSP could recognise any of the cards upto 4GB, and only the first 4GB of any card larger than that. So at 4GB, you're already maxed out.

    As a side, what someone *should* release is a 2/4/6 to 1 Memory Stick adapter. In the same way the Datel Hard Drive clipped on the back of the PSP (it replaced a part of the case didn't it?) someone should make a device that accepts multiple Memory Sticks and then has a switch to let you flick between them. It would be much smaller than the Datel Hard Drive, and allow much more space - 4GB for films, 4GB for music and 4GB for games anyone? :D

  • prettyboytim #24 6 years ago

    BLACKSHEEP:

    The playing-videos-from-memorystick functionality on the PSP is crippled so that you can't play better than QVGA resolution, irrespective of whether you buy it on a memory stick or convert it from one of your own DVDs.

  • tonynibbles #25 6 years ago

    @Peckmore

    I'm 99% sure you're wrong on that.
    PSP does support 8gb. The last firmware upgrade enabled 4gb and 8gb capacity, previously it only supported up to 2gb.

  • Zero Beat #26 6 years ago

    prettyboytim:

    But one would hope that Sony can allow full res memory stick video when it's DRM'd by them.

  • ctrl-k #27 6 years ago

    Gamespot - "The movies will play in [320x240] pixel resolution, lower than the 480x272 pixel resolution PSPs are capable of."

    Utter bollocks.

    Actually, I think this is almost certainly true. While it may not be 320x240 specifically, I seem to recall that the memorytsick bus is not fast enough to get all the bytes / second (ie 480x272=130560pixels) at a conistent rate, and as such, all movies that are "streamed" off the stick needs reformatting to a something smaller. What this format (or aspect ratio) ends up as is based on the dimensions of the footage (whether it is widescreen or not etc), and the PSP then scales it to fit the screen.

    Maybe someone solved this since I last checked? Feel free to share it then...

    K.