Go!View: Sky and Sony in unholy content alliance

It would be hard to deny the PSP has one of the best displays on any portable device -- its only real rivals are some of the Cowon devices and the holy iPhone from the church of St Steve. It seems logical that you'd want to use it to watch video, and with Sony's UMD movie format being such a miserable, wretched failure, the company needs to look elsewhere.

So, you're a mega-national company with a penchant for evil DRM, where do you look for some nefarious DRM-able content? The answer is Sky TV, no stranger to closed systems and restrictive viewing practices. From this summer you'll be able to subscribe to a package or download pay-per-view content on your PSP.

Details on pricing or what exactly will be available are thin on the ground at the moment, but it seems you'll have to download shows to a PC, and then transfer them across. Because DRM will be involved, it's safe to assume this will require a Windows-based PC, which is a shame, because downloading content over Wi-Fi would be pretty cool. Additionally, if you already subscribe to Sky, you won't get this service included for free, as you do with Sky Anytime, the on-demand service.

A Go!View spokesman told us content wouldn't be shareable with a PlayStation 3, which is a real shame. Sony is loud and proud about the ability of its games hardware to work together, so for something like this, it would seem logical to let people download via the PS3 and then sync with a PSP. If you don't have a PS3, you should be able to grab stuff over Wi-Fi on the PSP directly. Why involve a computer at all?

It would be both lovely and delightful if this was a service that would actually be of use to people. But as it stands, it doesn't look like it'll meet the needs of the consumer. Perhaps Channel 4 and the BBC would like to step in and save the day? We'd love to see iPlayer and 4oD on every portable device with a screen. And why not? The only thing holding us back is DRM. –Ian Morris