Killing iPods and eating crow

Killing iPods and eating crow

This past week has been an interesting one. Thanks to all of the feedback at EvilAvatar I chronicled Sunday night and a few followup conversations, I believe I have a much better handle on Sony's PSP strategy.

First, I'll start by eating a little crow. After all of my trumpeting about how UMD will fail due in large part to price, Amazon.com is offering several UMD titles at 30 percent off retail (about $14 before tax and shipping), which is a little more competitive than I expected at launch. I imagine other retailers will follow suit. This means either Sony is prepared to take a small bath on UMD short-term (and maybe even long-term), or the discs are much cheaper to produce than I had guessed.

Either could be true - I don't have access to the Sony bean-counters' master spreadsheet. But even without the hard evidence, I have a good idea where Sony is trying to take the PSP.

I realized straight away that UMD was Sony's attempt to make PSP a more mainstream consumer offering. It's a game machine, it's a movie player, it's a digital Walkman, it's a dessert topping, it's a floor wax. An all-in-one entertainment device. Everyone'll want one, right?

Alas, no. For at least some of the reasons I've chronicled, the PSP is still destined to fail in that respect. But Sony is convinced UMD is the missing piece of their iPod-killer puzzle. Here's why.

If you're a bit of a power user, you can transfer movies from your PC to your PSP. Home movies, downloaded content, whatever. You can even rip your DVDs (quasi-legally), convert them to MP4 video and then copy them to a memory card. Instant entertainment (well, almost). The problem is that the steps and tools to do so are a bit intimidating for the average person. It's not drag and drop. You can't just pop a DVD into your PC and add it to your digital movie library like you would a music CD with iTunes. And Sony probably won't offer this option. But they should.

The difference between iPod and PSP is pretty clear. It's a little thing call DRM, or Digital Rights Management. iTunes lets you rip your CDs in a way that is non-threatening to the music industry because it uses DRM to protect their ownership. Think you own the songs in your music collection? Guess again. You own a license to use them within certain parameters. It's only a matter of time before they add a frickin' EULA.

The files you create with iTunes are not shareable except to the PCs and iPods you have licensed to play the music. There's a limit, and if you abuse it you'll get caught pretty easily. That's a pretty good deterrant for the average user to raise the Jolly Roger - but more importantly, it's really easy to take 10,000+ songs from your music collection with you wherever you go. "Grandma can do it" easy. That's why the iPod is such a hit. That and some really good marketing.

The last time I checked there wasn't an easy, legal way to do the same with your DVD collection. Maybe Sony will pony up a turnkey DVD to PSP solution. They've already released their $15 Image Converter 2 software to make movie conversion a little easier in Japan. Alas, there's no news of a U.S. release yet, though someone has rigged an English translation if you're brave. Anyway, you're better off right now with PSP Video 9, which is free. Combine it with Videora to automate BitTorrent file conversion.

All of this is reasonably cool, but it's hardly iTunes simplicity, nor is it likely to be anytime soon. Sony wants you to buy its UMD discs because it's easier for them to introduce a new movie format than solve the huge DRM puzzle and convince the movie studies to go along with it.

Another path to PSP entertainment nirvana might be digital video recorders, or PVRs. Sony has already announced that PSX recordings can be transferred to the PSP. That would be great if the PS2 game console/PVR hybrid were a mainstream device. And even if it does take off, there doesn't seem to be an immediate plan to bring it to the U.S. What we need is Tivo to support this. And Replay TV. And Media Center PCs. Then we'd be getting somewhere close to a killer app. True, PVRs still aren't really mainstream yet. But this would create some synergy and the symbiotic combination could be a catalyst that boosts adoption of both.

The simple truth is that Sony stands to make more money with an iPod-killer than with a UMD player. Someone in their ivory tower should realize this. Maybe it's an executive who's maneuvering pieces like a chess pro as he tries to maneuver the skittish movie studios into a lukewarm cauldron before slowly turning up the heat. Or possibly it's a mid-level flunkie who's screaming into a supply closet every night because his superiors won't listen to his big ideas. I'd like to think it's the former.

UMD, in fact, could be seen as Sony hedging its bets. They'll try to use this awkward new format to make some incremental income on movies and maybe sucker a handful of non-gamers into buying into the PSP as "the last portable media device you'll ever need." If DRM proves un-doable, they have another pile of chips on the table - albeit on a real long shot.

Bring down the price of memory sticks and enable drag-and-drop DVD and PVR for my PSP and I'll buy two - one for each eyeball. And so will a lot of people.

I mean, A LOT. Pretty much everyone. Even Grandma.

-=Gamewatcher