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Variety reports that one of Sony’s big fish announcements this year will be a broadband TV service that’ll compete directly with cable. The TV service will offer multiple channels licensed from different content companies and will stream over the Internet. Meaning there would be no more need to pay for Sky or Virgin. Meaning awesome.
Variety says that Sony is just as far along with its own streaming TV service as Intel is. However, the details about Sony’s service remains unclear:
Few specifics are known about the proposed service, but it would be a package of linear channels akin to what pay-TV distributors traditionally provide, only delivered via broadband connection. In contrast to the cable operators who are bound by a geographic footprint, a virtual MSO can conceivably offer TV service to any subscriber nationwide.
Sony could theoretically leverage the PS3 or its Bravia TVs and Blu-ray players to make its streaming TV reach more homes, but nothing is set in stone yet. The announcement of the service isn’t even expected at next week’s CES but rather, later in the year. Last year, Sony stalled its pay-TV competing streaming TV service because those same villainous companies Sony wanted to kill, controlled the data pipes that Sony and its users would have to use. It’s unclear what solution Sony has come up with to avoid that same problem.
Either way, the chokehold that broadband and pay-TV companies have on TV is slowly, maybe, hopefully loosening. Maybe we can get the streaming TV service we want and ditch pay-TV this year. [Variety]
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This is one massive pipe dream, there are always alternative revenue streams but by far the largest any pay-TV channel receives is the carriage fee they get from Sky & Virgin, and seeing as most of the main channels are owned by broadcasters anyway they will not be biting the hand that feeds by bypassing the main platforms.
can it do sky sports? will it be anywhere near as good as TiVo?
No, and probably not.
In a nutshell, no it isn’t, not over here.
Unfortunately, I’d say you’re right. But I’d love for it to do it. Been hankering for a true over-the-top system to replace pay TV.
There’s nothing that needs to replace pay TV at the moment, what’s needed is better On Demand offerings from the content providers included within that subscription to their content.
I’ve got TiVo, so rarely watch live TV at the moment anyway!
What would be ideal from my perspective is that the broadcasters still have a channel pushing their content, but as soon as it starts broadcasting, it’s available for the box to stream and cache, either recorded from the channel or fetched from their on demand servers.
At any point thereafter, rather than subject me to endless reruns, I can just request the box stream/cache any of their back catalogue to watch at my leisure.
I say cache, because inevitably there will be people for whom live streaming of HD content is just a pipe-dream.