PlayStation Video Store: A Tale Of One Wednesday
The PS Video Store launch event with my fellow staffersPublished 19/11/2009 at 17:00 by djhsecondnature
A neon arrow, a zebra carpet, a forthcoming coaster, this is no ordinary building. Yesterday was the PlayStation Video Store launch party in glitzy Soho. Having travelled for an ardeous couple of hours via a national service that seems to bring out the aggressive, antsy and grumpy nature in even the best of citizens into the capital, I met up with overlord Alex. After a brief difficulty in locating each other, my bold blue hoody ensured I stood out from the crowd and we headed off to the pub, we were considerably early. He spent the first batch of conversation complaining about his travels from Scotland (the cheek of it), before we discussed some TSA happenings over a diet coke and an orange juice respectively.
As time ticked over, so did our patience with our resident TSA news hoarder. We sat in the Pillar of Hercules awaiting Tuffcub to enter, gossiping as to whether each man that entered was him, awaiting for someone to answer their phone when we enquired as to his whereabouts. Eventually he wanders in, his towering figure not something I was expecting. Regardless of the staff’s appearance we’re all lovely online, and both Alex and Tuffcub proved to be exactly the same in person.
After spending a little bit more time in a completely different Soho bar whilst we waited for the event to start, we chatted about how dissapointed we would be if Gerard Butler didn’t sing on stage with Little Boots in his King Leonidas voice, the gap in years between my young self and the slightly older two (which didn’t go down so smoothly) and at the confusion of multiple doors leading into the bathroom and the possibilities of treasure located behind one of them.
Once our baffling dialogue had seized, we made our way down the road to the event location where we were greeted upon a club-styled stamp on the wrist. Like the rest of the night, this was no ordinary stamp as we all inspected our wrists curious as to where the ink actually was. Either it’s UV ink, or they’re stamper was shockingly bad at his job was the conclusion we settled with.
Amongst the tiny but supposedly delicious bowls of Shepherd’s pie, was of course the reason we were there, to get pissed. No, I kid, it was for the now launched PS Video Store. With the launch trailer looping on some truly huge TVs, we prodeeced through a variety of equally mentally decorated rooms until we reached the demo room. As demo’s go, there’s obviously not a great deal to go through besides all of the facts that I furiously typed on my iPhone with its dwindling battery and sent off to the staff to post for all you fine readers (found here, here and here).
Aside from the volume of titles now available for rentals and purchase, it was the pricing that really impressed us. It instantly went from a service that I didn’t plan on using to a rental system that has made me alter my LoveFilm subscription already. Rentals from £2.49 for SD and £3.49 for HD, these are prices that are just within impulse purchase regions for me.
Munching down on plenty of bowls (all the food was in tiny bowls) of hake and chips and drinking copious amounts of diet coke and a couple rather delightful lychee breeze cocktails, we discussed many more things. The eavesdropping of a conversation about the lack of porn on the Video Store led to a quite creepy situation, which calmly led to the topics of cottaging and wondering who the lady that everyone was interviewing was. Whilst Alex went of to pilfer some stuff (by pilfer I mean collect swag to give away), the lack of Gerard Butler was becoming increasingly disappointing, although Tuffcub felt it necessary to mock my lack of celebrity knowledge.
So after a splendid trip to meet two fellow members of staff, discover my like for a new type of fish, use a cloakroom for free for the first time since primary school and get to see and hear about the Video Store, I can safely conclude: well done Sony.
Comments
Please note that all comments are the opinion of the individual author and not TheSixthAxis.
Person678 | 19/11/2009 17:04
BOOM! Headshot!
1794 TSA Points | Member since: Jan 2009
That pie /does/ look good…
ShovellyJoe | 19/11/2009 17:15
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1203 TSA Points | Member since: Oct 2008
The pie looks alright, I’m more interested in that luminous red drink!
jontheking | 19/11/2009 17:07
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270 TSA Points | Member since: Oct 2008
Sounds like a good night. I hope you pilfered … Sorry collected some excellent goodies and freebies for your troubles.
Dexter17 | 19/11/2009 17:08
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3285 TSA Points | Member since: Jun 2009
God I wish I was there…
bunimomike | 19/11/2009 17:15
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4798 TSA Points | Member since: Jul 2009
Great to read about you guys getting together /and/ getting on so well. Top stuff, dj.
kevatron400 | 19/11/2009 17:15
Don't call him Kevatron400.
1761 TSA Points | Member since: Dec 2008
So what were your impressions of eachother as real people though? Nofster? Cub?
bunimomike | 19/11/2009 18:34
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4798 TSA Points | Member since: Jul 2009
Looking for some dirt for the tabloids, eh?
nofi | 19/11/2009 21:04
Wants a custom tag.
4309 TSA Points | Member since: Forever
Personally I thought Davs and TC were great lads. Took a little while for them to actually understand what I was saying, but by 10pm we were having a good laugh giggling at TSA membe – er, I mean football.
Tuffcub | 19/11/2009 23:43
Team TSA: Writer
4070 TSA Points | Member since: Dec 2008
Im “Towering” apperently. Im not, just everyone else in the world is a short arse. Was a good evening nice to meet the lads. Just back from the L4D2 launch party and we have a TSA exclusive video.. stay tuned
carlosfilippsen | 19/11/2009 17:34
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1316 TSA Points | Member since: Mar 2009
Lucky you. Wish I could get invited to these things.
Gamoc | 22/11/2009 13:25
Team TSA: Content Manager
1216 TSA Points | Member since: Forever
It’s considerably worse to be invited TWICE and not be able to go, like I did. Grr.
gazzagb | 19/11/2009 18:28
Master of speling mitakse
2760 TSA Points | Member since: Feb 2009
Looks like a good pie, hope you guys had fun!
davidjmclare | 19/11/2009 19:09
always on easy
1094 TSA Points | Member since: May 2009
sounds well good, i wanna go to a launch party! ill have my own launch party. ill rent a movie and have a shandy
shields_t | 19/11/2009 19:13
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1646 TSA Points | Member since: Oct 2008
Argh! my internet connection has chosen today to go down to 1Kbit/week, was well up for some HD movie action tonight
cc_star | 19/11/2009 21:37
Team TSA: Writer
7878 TSA Points | Member since: Forever
1kb/week is the government’s stated aim for the UK isn’t it?
Damigos | 19/11/2009 20:07
* Banned *
-828 TSA Points | Member since: Nov 2009
lol
dirtyhabit | 19/11/2009 20:26
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1445 TSA Points | Member since: Forever
Anyone downlaoded anything yet? Im waiting for watchmen. Where does it go? I was expecting an icon or folder on the XMB or summat .
Watchmen is 9.2gb BTW and taking aaaaages. hopefully just a busy launch night?
minerwilly | 19/11/2009 21:03
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752 TSA Points | Member since: Feb 2009
Thanks for the info David , hope your heads weren’t too sore today ! Got to agree that those prices are bloody agreeable to my wallet and like you say anymore and I wouldn’t bother but thats cheaper than renting . By the way how long do you have before it vanished from Hard-drive or do they disappear as soon as viewed ?
nofi | 19/11/2009 21:05
Wants a custom tag.
4309 TSA Points | Member since: Forever
I think you get 2 weeks to start a film, and then once started it lasts 48 hours.
dirtyhabit | 19/11/2009 21:15
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1445 TSA Points | Member since: Forever
LOL, At the rate Watchmen HD is downloading at the moment, I might just be ready to start watching it by then!
djhsecondnature | 19/11/2009 21:40
Team TSA: Media
893 TSA Points | Member since: Forever
Yeah what Al said. Also I don’t get hangovers
dirtyhabit | 19/11/2009 21:46
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1445 TSA Points | Member since: Forever
Don’t worry. You will. :(
Raen | 19/11/2009 23:59
Team TSA: Writer
3721 TSA Points | Member since: Mar 2009
He really doesn’t, someone fed him half a bottle of chilly vodka and he survived fine. Was annoyingly chirpy. It just further supports my ‘Davs is a robot’ theory.
minerwilly | 19/11/2009 21:06
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752 TSA Points | Member since: Feb 2009
Thanks Nofi , right back to the Battlefield Beta .
karlsquell | 19/11/2009 21:30
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169 TSA Points | Member since: Forever
So here is my little rant!
Well i hate the video store as a store. Renting is fine but buying sucks for me.
First of all you can only download the bought movie once. Once as in 1 time.
Second you can’t transfer it to an external hdd to get a copy for safety reasons.
So all in all its like this. You buy a whole lot of movies and then your run out of hdd space. Whats next? Deleting a movie? That would be like throwing a DVD in the bin beacuse you are out of shelf space. Alright then get a new bigger hdd. No luck either because you cant transfer your old movies.
There are plenty of other ways to lose your movies like having your ps3 die.
There is just 1 conclusion (for me that is). Buying movies on psn is no good.
Maybe I’ll rent a few flicks but then again why not stream ‘em.
Anybody got a different opinion?
(source: videostore faq on psn webpage and the terms of use in psn)
Watchful | 19/11/2009 21:41
Team TSA: Writer
2084 TSA Points | Member since: Oct 2008
You can back up and restore videos bought from the store so if you get a bigger HDD that’s not a problem. That was a firmware change a while back.
djhsecondnature | 19/11/2009 21:43
Team TSA: Media
893 TSA Points | Member since: Forever
It was my understanding that when you backup your ps3 hdd it would backup your movies. Also whilst it is only one download, if you need to download it again you just contact sony. Annoying, yes. But it does mean you could get it again.
Danlord | 19/11/2009 21:42
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111 TSA Points | Member since: Sep 2009
This may sound a little rudimentary or obvious, but what resolution is the standard definition and high definition films? I’m curious as I have not yet found any details for them and would like to know.
Thanks in advance,
ghost5 | 19/11/2009 22:14
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698 TSA Points | Member since: Oct 2008
I’ve no proof, but looking at the size of the HD films I would say 720p.
djhsecondnature | 19/11/2009 22:24
Team TSA: Media
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No idea if it’s all of them, but there are 1080p films.
bunimomike | 19/11/2009 22:29
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4798 TSA Points | Member since: Jul 2009
2½ hour films (in 720p) usually chime in for 5½-6GB or so. Not seen any 1080p films under 8GB. I’m going with .mkv files but appreciate that’s just a container so is that h.264 in there? Anyway, Sony would be helping a huge amount of they just mention 720p or 1080p in the details section when you click on a title thumbnail.