New Details on Sony’s BD to PSP Ripping Concept

Yes, this is a few days old but new details have emerged about the rumored BD to PSP ripping utility that Sony was supposedly going to launch. Essentially, this would allow you to rip BD movies to a low def format for your portable media player. The good news is that it’s coming, the bad news is that Sony, unsurprisingly, bungled it.

In an interview with IGN, senior marketing manager for the PSP, John Koller, detailed the concept. Basically, there’s no ripping at all. The BD movie disc will contain a low def file that can be transfered to the PSP. The movie itself is not being transcoded to a lower definition but rather the low def copy is a separate file. This is some good news but for those hoping to be able to rip existing movies to their PSP like you can with audio CDs, forget it. Only new discs will have this feature. Koller did not however that it will not be just a feature for Blu-ray but will be featured on some DVDs as well. Likely in two disc special editions. Sony Pictures initiated the project and some other studios have come on board with the concept. There’s no word on what DRM will be included in these copies but I think we can safely say it will be there and likely will be intrusive. For those hoping for a fuss free way of watching your DVD collection on the road, you’re going to have to stick with doing it “illegally”. This just proves that the studios are still out of touch with what consumers want.

You can read the complete interview here. The stuff mentioned above is on page 3.