European Sony PS3 has inferior backward compatibility

Sony said today that the European version of the PlayStation 3 console will have less backward compatibility as the U.S. and Japanese models."The backwards compatibility is not going to be as good as the U.S. and Japan models," a Sony representative said.
PlayStation 3 was launched in Japan and North America in November. The model that will be introduced in Europe on March 23 will be designed differently.
Software will take over some of the functionality that was originally taken care of by dedicated chips, which means far fewer PlayStation 2 games can be played on a European PS3 compared with the Japanese and American PS3 models that play 98 percent of old games.
"Sony is managing expectations by saying now that the new console will play fewer of the old games. And that's a good thing," said analyst Alex Kwiatowski at British market research group Vertical Market Technologies.

Via DVH

Sony to allow movie, TV downloads on Playstation 3

MUMBAI: Japanese media conglomerate Sony has announced that users of the PlayStation 3 will shortly be able to download Sony movies and television shows on their gaming console. Sony made this announcement to hype the launch of the PlayStation 3 in Europe as well as push more sales of the system in the US. In creating a movie and music download service for the PlayStation 3, Sony will be putting itself in competition most directly with Microsoft and the Xbox 360 platform. The inclusion of a hard drive in the PlayStation 3 is part of a larger strategy to boost the PlayStation's presence as an entertainment hardware device, rather than just a game machine.