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Download Movies and TV Shows to Your PlayStation 3, Starting Tonight

by Tom Samiljan on July 15, 2008 at 04:36 PM


With the exception of Nintendo's Wii, it looks like video game consoles are increasingly becoming excellent devices on which to get movie and TV show downloads (especially for HDTV owners who are starved for fresh HD content). Yesterday, Microsoft announced the immediate availability of more movies and TV shows from partners such as Universal and NBC (essentially, this means that viewers can now get 'The Office' and 'Battlestar Galactica' on demand in HD for the first time ever). Well, now it looks like Sony has followed suit, as it just announced that starting tonight, its movie and TV download service for the PlayStation 3 will be up and running.

Though it doesn't have the nifty Netflix integration that Microsoft also announced for Xbox 360 yesterday, it does offer the ability to transfer downloaded movies and TV shows to the PlayStation Portable (PSP), so you can take your content on the road with you. Of course, being Sony, the company was able to line up a roster of content partners that include not only Sony, but also MGM, Turner, Lionsgate, and Fox. All shows will be offered in SD video, but plenty will also be available in HD, for rental or purchase (we still don't know if it'll be 720p HD or 1080p HD, but we're guessing 720p since nothing was mentioned). As with Vudu, Xbox 360, iTunes, and other downloadable movie services, the PS3 download service has progressive download, which means you can start watching the movie within a minute after purchasing (the rest of the movie downloads in the background).

We're looking forward to seeing how this service works when it launches later tonight. We're particularly curious to see what content, specifically, is available in HD. We're hoping plenty of TV shows are on that HD list, as on demand TV shows in high-def are sorely lacking. For a play-by-play account of today's Sony E3 press conference, make sure to read through Engadget/Joystiq's thorough live blog.

Tags: breaking news, BreakingNews, downloads, e3-2008, HD, HDTV

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