On Wednesday, 18 March 2015, Sony introduced its PlayStation Vue web-based streaming TV service, which offers a bundle of channels along with a personalised, searchable approach to watching live and on-demand television.
For a monthly subscription, subscribers can access more than 50 channels, including CBS, Fox and NBC, and cable channels such as USA, TBS, Fox News and Discovery. Special features include the availability of the previous three days of popular programming and personalisation features based on a user’s viewing habits.
The service, aimed at gamers and a younger demographic in general, will initially be available only to owners of the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 3 consoles in New York, Chicago and Philadelphia. Eventually, it is expected to be available on the iPad and in other United States cities. Disney-owned networks, including ABC, ESPN and the Disney Channel, are not part of the service.
With the introduction of the PlayStation Vue, Sony joins a growing number of media, tech and telecom companies racing to release web-based TV offerings that challenge the entrenched cable and satellite business. Those new services include live, on demand and other streaming options, often in more streamlined interfaces than the typical cable offering.
The new services from Sony, Apple, Dish Network, HBO and others are aimed at a growing number of people who pay for Internet but do not subscribe for television. Some are so-called cord cutters, who have canceled their subscriptions to cable or satellite services, and others are “cord nevers,’ who never subscribed in the first place.
This group watches programs via on-demand streaming services like Netflix, Amazon, YouTube and now, potentially, the new live streaming options. The number of households in the United States paying for broadband but not television was 10.6 million in the third quarter of 2014, up 16 percent from the same period in 2012, according to the research firm SNL Kagan.
Source: The New York Times
