Sony Connect: Video Content Within 12 Months

Sony is to extend its Connect music download service to cover video downloads within the next twelve months. The chairman and and chief executive of Sony Pictures Entertainment, Michael Lynton, said: “Sony Connect will not be just a music service but also a video business within the next year.”

Of course, no-one dropped their latte at that announcement, but this is the first time that the move has been confirmed.

Sony’s consumer electronics business is developing devices that will be able to download and play videos from the Connect store, in exactly the same way that their new range of audio devices do now. The new service will be called Movielink, and given Sony’s enthusiasm for DRM, will probably only be compatible with Sony devices and PCs.

Movielink is a joint distribution venture with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Paramount, Sony Pictures, Universal Studios and Warner Brothers, and will feature content from all five studios and others.

Sony Connect

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Fraser Lovatt

Fraser Lovatt has spent the last fifteen years working in publishing, TV and the Internet in various capacities, and believes that they will be seperate platforms for at least a while yet. His main interests at the moment are exploring where Linux is taking home entertainment and how technology is conferring technical skills on more and more people.Fraser Lovatt was born in the same year that 2001: A Space Odyssey was delighting and confusing people in the cinemas, and developed a lifelong love of technology as soon as he realised that things could be taken apart, sometimes put back together again, but mostly left in bits or made into something the original designer hadn't quite planned upon.At school he was definitely in the ZX Spectrum/Magpie/BMX camp, rather than the BBC Micro/Blue Peter/well-behaved group. This is all deeply ironic as he later went on to spend nine years working at the BBC.After a few years of working as a bookseller in Scotland, ("Back when it was actually a skilled profession" he'll tell anyone still listening), he moved to England for reasons he can't quite explain adequately to himself. After a couple of publishing jobs punctuated by sporadic bursts of travelling and photography came the aforementioned nine years at the BBC where he specialised in internet technologies and video.These days his primary interests are Java, Linux, videogames and pies - and if they're not candidates for convergence, then what is?