Variety reports that one of Sony’s big-fish announcements this year will be a broadband TV service that’ll compete directly with pay TV. 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 for pay TV. 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 cable competing streaming TV service because those same villainous cable 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 pay TV companies have on TV is slowly maybe hopefully loosening. Maybe we can get the streaming TV service we want and ditch cable this year. [Variety]