The Sony PSP it not just about games, with it's 170mm Widescreen it great for watching movies as well. Sony hopes to offer downloadable movies, like what iTunes is to music.

"We want to set business models, pricing models, distribution models like Jobs [Steve Jobs CEO of Apple Computer] did for music, but for the film industry,"*

Lions Gate Home Entertainment has also joined Sony Pictures Entertainment in the list of Producer/Distributors who will release movies for the Sony PSP. Lions Gate's initial PSP releases will include:

With the Sony PSP you can watch movies and videos two different ways, either via:

• UMD (Universal Media Disc)
• Memory Stick PRO Duo

You will be able to buy movies on UMDs. So far the only announced movie is Square Enix’s ‘The Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children’, which is expected to be lunched middle of 2005.

Presently the American Sony PSP Value Pack is shipped with Spider-Man 2 the movie on UMD.

In addition to having a UMD drive the Sony PSP is also capable of reading Memory Sticks. This linked with the PSP supporting the MP4 format, means you will be able to watch movies from a Memory Stick. So you’ll be able to convert your own movies and transfer them onto your PSP.

To get movies from your PC to your PSP you can use Get Connected pack, which supports avi, mpg, mpeg, vob, wmv, mov, mpe, 3gp and mp4 video files.

The MP4 video standard, which Sony also supports with some of its camcorders and other devices, is also known as H.264 and is closely related to (although not entirely compatible with) the popular DiVX, Xvid video and other mobile phone video formats.

*Michael Arrieta, senior vice president of Sony Pictures, at the Digital Hollywood.