Monday, November 23, 2009

Movie rentals and purchases on PSN

Sony announced that from November the 19th Playstation 3 owners will be able to rent or buy movies via the Playstation Store. For anyone without a PS3 or a PSN id who may be tempted by this announcement they can check out the fun at the UK Video Store
So what's available? We're not telling you.
How much will it cost to rent/buy a movie? We're not telling you.

Woah that'll tip the balance for those mulling it over. Okay I'm not being completely fair if you check the small print, and I mean small print for the 2fer offer on "Da Vinci Code" and "Angels and Demons" you'll spot that the DVC is £6.99 and AaD is £11.99. Please don't ask if these are SD or HD because We're not telling you.

Oh wait you might be able to find out because there is a way of finding out what's available. Head back to the index page and scroll to the bottom and you'll get a list of movies. No wait silly me you'll get links to the list of movies arranged by studio. So which studio did DVC and AaD? Um thank you IMDB it's Columbia; oh not an option. Okay it's Imagine, no wait it's Skylark. Oh those are the producers I want the distributors, silly me; that'll be um Sony for the UK at least.

Ah all the Sony movies, now to find DVC or AaD good job they're in alphabetical order, what do you mean they're not in alphabetical order? Ah well AaD is on the first page anyway and I see that it's available as HD or SD... to rent. To buy you get it at SD.

The "Da Vinci Code" on page 3 can't be rented and can only be purchased at SD quality.

So £6.99 and £11.99 for SD versions. Let's look at Amazon shall we?

DVC on DVD (i.e. SD quality) £3.98; AaD on DVD £9.88. So rather than go online and buy them from Amazon, you can instead download them, store them (?) and only pay only £3.01 or £2.11 more for the privilege. Okay fair enough you get them now rather than in 2-3 days, but come on Sony if you're going to try to encourage us to switch to digital downloading it might be an idea to make the downloaded product cheaper than the physical one.

Yeesh I could walk into a supermarket and probably buy them cheaper than Sony are offering as well as pick up some popcorn to go with it.

5 comments:

Orphi said...

Sometimes you have to wonder what these people are thinking. At least, I sometimes wonder.

I'm guessing they're thinking that people won't notice the price and will just hit the buy button because they can't be bothered to walk down the road. Or something.

FlipC said...

Well if you're out in the sticks, and desperate to watch it then; um you'd rent it not buy it. However if you're that far out in the sticks you're internet connection is probably lousy anyway so...

FlipC said...

'you are internet connection' sheesh

Don B said...

You seem to have have forgotten about the public library as a source for DVDs. OK they still cost but the prices depends on the length of the DVD and those of us who live in the sticks can get them via the mobile library.

FlipC said...

But that's still a case of waiting for the mobile library to turn up rather than having them 'on-demand'.

Still it reinforces the fact you'd have to be a real recluse or be in an absolute hurry to use the on-demand services at the prices shown.