matt - Monday, July 13th, 2009
A recent announcement from both Sony and Netflix has the DVD/Online video service being integrated into future Sony TV’s. While this is a pretty significant leap forward for the future digital living room, what about Sony’s other services – primarily Crackle and the PlayStation Network?
Sony’s online video service, Crackle, recently went to a Hulu-type premium content model and has many of Sony’s catalog movies on the Crackle service for viewing. But so does Netflix.
The PlayStation Network (PSN) has movies you can stream for a nominal cost (like Xbox) and again features Sony Pictures related content. This content is also available on Netflix.
So my question is – where is the content strategy around all of this for Sony? I know this helps brings a unique feature to the Sony Electronics line of TV’s but is it at the expense of growing the consumer base for both the PlayStation Network and Crackle? Or is it a more likely scenario of Sony playing nice with Netflix for now until their other online content services have matured. It’s no secret that Netflix will have it’s hands full fending off competition from in-store DVD kiosks like Redbox for it’s current DVD mailing service, and by the time streaming content delivery has matured, at least Crackle content should be integrated into Sony TV sets. Hmm…maybe there is a content strategy after all.
“Keep your friends close, your enemies closer.”
matt - Tuesday, April 21st, 2009
Adobe recently announced that they were extending Flash to TV and set-top box platforms. Dan Rayburn of the Business of Online Video has an excellent write-up on why Flash will not be a dominate platform on TV sets anytime in the near future. As Dan points out:
“Putting all that aside, how well will Flash work on the TV in terms of performance? For starters, when it specifically comes to HD video quality, Flash is not exactly leading in that department. Trying to get HD videos to play on my MacBook from their showcase website is a poor experience, with my six month old MacBook not being able to handle the processing power that’s needed. Yes, it works for 480p content, but only Adobe classifies 480p as “HD” on the web, no one else does. How much processing power will the TV or set-top box need to have even with the “optimized implementation of Flash technology” that Adobe is working on? Flash video is a resource intensive beast and unless Flash Lite is much better, I think the performance is going to be a big issue. I want to see this working at 1080p on a 50″ TV set without someone needing to have a 10MB connection.”
It’s not breaking news that the battle for the digital living room has already begun, but it also begs the question if Adobe is already too late to the game for this. The Big 3 Console Makers (Xbox, PS3, Wii) already have a foothold in the digital living room and what’s to stop someone like Sony from integrating a future iteration of PlayStation directly into their Bravia line of TV’s?