Sony is making important announcements left and right at this year's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, the most recent of which is its plans to get involved in a new facet of the television business. The company has confirmed that it is launching an Internet service that will bring live television programs and on-demand content into the home.
The announcement was made by Andrew House, the chief executive of Sony Computer Entertainment Group. In his keynote at the CES 2014 he described the new cloud-based video service, which will seek to combine the best of cable and TV offerings and digital services through its Sony PlayStation consoles in the United States, according to the L.A. Times.
The idea is for Sony to create cloud storage of no-demand video, live television as well as DVR files to stream whenever you want from whatever Sony gadget you want. If all of your content exists in Sony's cloud, you'll be able to access it from your PlayStation console, Sony television or smartphone. According to Sony, the new service will work on 70 million Sony devices.
It's unclear what exactly Sony means by "live TV" just yet, but building an all-in-one service like this is very vulnerable to lawsuits and complications with studios and cable companies, according to The Verge.
Sony has already offered video on demand services, meaning this innovation is not necessarily a shock, although it is significantly more ambitious than many thought.
"It's really just trying to bring a new experience of TV viewing," said Sony Corp. President and CEO Kazuo Hirai in a press briefing. "We always talk about it, as an industry, but we've never been able to bring that together."
This announcement sounds strikingly similar to Sony's big video game announcement form earlier this week. PlayStation Now will allow users to stream older-generation games to their newer Sony gaming device, including the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita.
