Porto Media looks neat; now just add mobile
I came across Porto Media whilst I was sat on the Heathrow Express this afternoon in a promotional video by IBM. (You can, incidentally, see the video here… IBM haven’t quite entered the 2.0 age — the video is simply a Quicktime download link so I can’t embed it here).
Here’s how it works:
The Movie Key is a USB stick. You plug it into these ATM style ‘moviepoint’ machines and download your movie of choice there and then. Smart.
It’s using Microsoft Windows digital rights management stuff so the movie will expire after a few days and the movie companies can relax about content control.
The thing that struck me when watching the video was that it would be rather convenient to use your mobile instead of a USB Stick. Theoretically speaking, actually, you could probably get a Nokia N95 8Gb to work with this service. You’d have to wait a little while for the movie to download to it though, even by USB… it’d probably take ages.
Still, i like the concept of being able to ‘plug my mobile’ into a moviepoint ATM and rent a few movies to watch at home later on. Or on the plane. Or wherever.
Pretty cool indeed. Thing is, this sounds really really open to hacking. I mean, you stick a USB into the machine?
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Posted by alfie on March 19th, 2008 at 12:15 pm.If Porto Media can really afford to fund thousands and thousands of their MoviePoint terminals around the country, I’d reckon they’re onto a (probably very large) winner!
My only doubt is the resolution of the movie.
Typical USB2 file transfer speeds are about 3 MB/s, so the video files can only be around 200MB — not large enough to give “dvd quality”.
Maybe they’ve found a way to increase the transport speed?
HeavyLight’s last blog post..Whatleydude’s N95 saga: VF comes out shining!
Posted by HeavyLight on March 19th, 2008 at 1:35 pm.Just got a response back from Porti Media:
“We have managed to get more from USB2 so we are able to produce a DVD
quality experience from the user. Also, we have developed another solution
based on another interface (other than USB) that allows even higher speeds
so therefore larger files in super-quick times - ideal for HD content.”
I’m still a little sceptical but can’t wait to give it a trial.
HeavyLight’s last blog post..Whatleydude’s N95 saga: VF comes out shining!
Posted by HeavyLight on March 19th, 2008 at 4:00 pm.