SCE to Launch H.264-based Video Distribution Service for PSP

Jul 22, 2005 14:11

Categories such as "Movies" and "Sports" were demoed at the PlayStation Meeting.

Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. (SCE) will launch a video distribution service for its portable game console "PlayStation Portable (PSP)" on July 27, 2005.

Sony Communication Network Corp. will open a dedicated video distribution portal site named "Portable TV" (p-TV) for the PSP. Contents will be delivered from the p-TV site to the PSP via wireless LAN. The company demonstrated using the service to download and play back a Korean TV show and others at the "PlayStation Meeting 2005" held in Tokyo on July 21, 2005. Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc., BANDAI CHANNEL Co., Ltd., GAGA Communications Inc. and other companies have announced their intention to provide contents for the service.

The p-TV utilizes MPEG-4 AVC (H.264) as the video compression format. System Software ver. 2.0 which includes the web-browser required to use the service will be available for download from July 27. The software allows users to view ordinary WWW websites as well as the contents provided by the p-TV. In addition, game software can be played in combination with the web-browsing functionality. The browser supports HTML 4.01, but does not support Flash.