Sony Launching Internet Television Service for PS3?

According to recent reports from the Wall Street Journal, Sony is preparing to go head on with cable providers such as DirecTV and Comcast with an internet based television service. The service which is said to have been built to take on the biggest of competitors will be launched on Sony’s vast catalog of electronic devices, such as the PlayStation 3 sitting right next to your cable receiver.

According to recent reports from the Wall Street Journal, Sony is preparing to go head on with cable providers such as DirecTV and Comcast with an internet based television service. The service which is said to have been built to take on the biggest of competitors will be launched on Sony's vast catalog of electronic devices, such as the PlayStation 3 sitting right next to your cable receiver.

The content delivery method is said to be similar to the one that Apple has been working on for some time, but the finer details haven't been revealed at this point.

The article that broke the rumor only suggest that Sony is considering the option at this point, but did say the Electronics and Entertainment company has been in talks with "several" media companies in an attempt to negotiate the rights to offer televised programs across the web.

By Al McCarthy on November 16, 2011

Did you this story? Please share it with your friends

18 COMMENTS

Jason
REPLY
COPY CATS!
Raven
REPLY
Why would sony bother? Pretty much every playstation owner thought it was stupid that xbox was doing this.
It’s not like ps3 fans would consider xbox features worthless until they actually get it months or years later….
Jason
REPLY
Yeah Im a Xbox fan and even I thought it was silly lol. Probably a feature I wont use unless it’s cheaper or has more cool channels than cable!
therapist
REPLY
some people might like this and some might not like it.. I myself can careless about this. im happy with netflix and that all i need. I got my ps3 for gaming and once in a blue moon watch some movies on it. overall I can careless if they do release it.. again some ppl might love this some don’t care like i do
Niggy aka Black Ziggy
REPLY
Yes, but will it blend?
bob do 69
REPLY
Its it free otherwise xbox still SUCKS my toes
IHATEHIPSTERS
REPLY
“There is absolutely no difference between the online experiences of Xbox Live and PSN except for party chat”
Not entirely true. Some of the key differences between xbox live and PSN is on live it’s a streamlined system that is hardware-level. On xbox every game shares the same game invite system in addition to the party system (which is not just for chat). For example: You have 4 people in a “party” which is for chatting but if you all are playing different games and you want to play the same, one person boots up say gears of war 3 and you want the remaining people in your party to join, you can simply click, “Invite party to game” then all members of your party can join your game straight away. There is no system level cross-game invite system on the PS3 (I have a PS3, so don’t try to tell me you can).
Also, on the PS3 there is no system-based invite system. Each game comes equipped with its own invite system (or lack thereof). Games like Far Cry 2 have no invite system whatsoever. If you want to play with someone, you can either call them on the phone or send them a dashboard level message telling them what your game room is going to be called then they just have to look for it, and don’t expect to chat with that person until they are in your room since there is no system level in-game chat system other than what each game may or may not offer for the PS3.
I can go on and on about the intricacies and advantages of the 360′s invite and party system and the lack of any invite system or system-level invite/chat/party system on the PS3 but that would get quite boring.
MS made the right choice making the invite/chat/party system hardware-level and forcing developers to adhere to certain standards so each game is uniform and everyone can get used to one (convenient) way of inviting each other and chatting with each other during gameplay. On the PS3, it can be quite a headache depending on the game. Some games have a perfectly fine invite systems, but again, it’s software level and not standard across the board so your experiences will widely differ.
Just wanted to make those few clarifications.
- ragglefraggle1
  well thats not what this article is about, but ill correct some of your lies anyway.
  You can invite people on a different game as it stores the invite info on your psn assount. On the game there is a button called INVITES that will sync you to that game or room. P.S Live chat rooms while gaming are a hinderance & make you a liability to your team.
  On to the REAL point.
  They aleady made play TV. This just seems like upgrading that service.
- Cool dude
  Croos game chat on Xbox is not a hindrance but a feature. It could very well come in handy if you wish to talk to your friend without the need of having the same game or being in the same lobby.
  I also noticed that it is significantly harder to join friend’s lobbies in PSN which is quite annoying. For example: I rented COD black ops a few months ago to play with my friend online. I made a private lobby so that we can play together with modified rules. Only 3 out of ten of my friends managed to join my lobby. However this problem is generally absent on Xbox live when I finally bought it for Xbox 360.
  Sorry, this may only be my connection but its what I’ve experienced.
- Heard it here first
  Cool story, that small feature doesn’t make me like XBL anymore then I already did though haha which isn’t that much.
- Cool dude
  Its peoples choice if they want to disregard that feature or use it to socialize. Since PSN doesnt have that feature, Im not suprised that your just shunning it.
reality
REPLY
Page outta Xbox playbook, now if they could just implement the basics of Live I might play my PS3 games online more often.
So raggle, explain why I couldn’t send an invite to my buddy in GT5, I had to call him, tell him the name of the room, he had to refresh the lobby list 5x before he found me. No invite system whatsoever for GT5. Took 15min total just to get us in the same lobby, Xbox, 15sec. This was pre 2.0 update. UC2 on the other hand has an invite system, and is easy to use, but still takes longer than inviting on Xbox.
- Heard it here first
  It would be awesome if the Cable Sony provides is more powerful then any other cable company. Like the internet is REALLY FAST. That would make a lot of people choose them for that reason.
Titan
REPLY
I’m guessing a PSN+ feature, something encourage more to join it.
- AKA Zzz
  More than likely. It would be a smart move by Sony, I called this weeks ago when we were discussing the cable channels on XBOX.
drake
REPLY
Internet TV must have good programming to to compete with cable which is unlikely considering cable has an iron grip on most live sports, primetime shows etc.
gaming is definitely moving towards an all digital age i.e. digital downloads, that is worrying because it will effectively kill off used games, and discounts due to non existent shelf space, retailers will go bust and the prices will be solely controlled by the console makers.
A113n
REPLY
I personally am happy paying $8/month for netflix, there are too many shows on that already. But if this is cheaper than local cable or sat. TV then it would be cool.
Got it All $$$
REPLY
http://m.ign.com/articles/1213055