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Sony PlayStation (Games) Television The Internet The Media Entertainment

Sony To Take On Netflix With Playstation Vue 130

Posted by samzenpus from the changing-channels dept.
stephendavion writes "Sony is planning to launch PlayStation Vue, a TV service for PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 consoles providing on demand programs and live content. The company will roll out the service to selected customers in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, and is expected to feature content from CBS, Fox, NBC Universal, Discovery Communications and 75 other channels. The service is expected to allow users to save their programs for up to 28 days."
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Sony To Take On Netflix With Playstation Vue More

Sony To Take On Netflix With Playstation Vue

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  • Stupid (Score:5, Insightful)

    by halivar ( 535827 ) <`moc.liamg' `ta' `reglefb'> on Friday November 14, 2014 @09:55AM (#48385027)

    Netflix works on every device, everywhere. Sony is planning a competitor that works on a system with a fraction of Netflix's availability. Ask Microsoft how well the XBox Live's on-demand streaming is kicking Netflix's ass.

    • exactly. this is another attempt at vender lockin in a market where openess has already been king. What cant you put netflix on? and for that matter what cant you put XBMC on these days???

      I like the idea of being able to do more with the systems, but this seems like a "they got it so we need it" type thing. except there is no need at all for such a service.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        XBMC is an inferior media platform when compared to Plex.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by jedidiah ( 1196 )

          The only thing it has on XBMC is the server side transcoding and that's something that should be made obsolete by better decoding hardware.

          Also, the Plex backend server is an incredible pig if you've got a non-trivial media library. In general, the whole thing makes you want to rip it apart and re-engineer it for efficiency and performance.

          • xbmc can do what plex does... if you mess with advancedsettings, apply a ton of special filename recognition patterns, set it up to store things in a shared sql database, and trick it into having an instance running somewhere headless and prod it to update library ever so often. For plex, they have a naturally headless server that takes care of all of that.

            On the flip side, there is a gob ton of stuff I can do with xbmc that I can't with Plex. One painful one for me is integrate with my mythbackend *kind

        • I have not really messed with PLEX yet. XBMC with the XBMC hub wizard installed is pretty much functional out of the box, and works on damn near any hardware these days. its one of those things ive been using for so long that it does everything i want it to do so I havent bothered looking at anything else.

          Would you mind telling me some of the differences between the 2 platforms?

          • XBMC is a player. Plex is a player, sure, but it's also a server. It transcodes your media and hands it off to other Plex clients, and more importantly it serves metadata to Plex clients so that they don't have to fetch and store it locally — the main weakness of XBMC in an environment with more than one player, IMO. You can copy media information between systems manually, and maybe someone has a plugin which does this by now, but I haven't seen it. In theory, a distributed filesystem would do this jo

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by jedidiah ( 1196 )

              > XBMC is a player. Plex is a player, sure, but it's also a server. It transcodes your media and hands it off to other Plex clients, and more importantly it serves metadata to Plex clients so that they don't have to fetch and store it locally â" the main weakness of XBMC in an environment with more than one player,

              Not a big deal really.

              XBMC is the gold standard when it comes to metadata management. So the fact that you have to do it n+1 times is really not a problem.

              The lack of a central repository

              • I have a plex server running on my headless linux server, and I'm not exactly sure that I'd call it a resource hog. I use it to watch TV and movies that I've ripped from BluRay, as well as some downloaded shows. I'm incredibly happy with it. I run it on a machine with a web server, mongodb database, and obviously my sftp server. I never really notice massive performance hits on the machine.

                Sync is a bit of a pain to deal with, but once you figure out how it works (it's a 3 step process and the client ne

        • NO! They are different. Plex is better at streaming, but XBMC is the better local client. I like Plex but i cant stand the sync shit. Just give me direct access to the damn file. Paying for penetrating the firewall is pretty annoying too, but i have lifetime so whatever.

          • I dont think you have to pay to get access outside network. you have to pay to let other people get access so you can share, no?

        • XBMC is an inferior media platform when compared to Plex.

          You understand that the front end media player for Plex is an XBMC fork right?.. If it wasn't for the server/transcode features Plex would be just a shiny skin on the same essential core.

          As someone mentioned above Plex is great till you throw 50k songs at it and another 5-6k videos into it then its true colors start to show as it munches through any/all available ram and it brings your normally fine machine to its knees.

    • That's because they need to stop trying to make a Netflix clone and do something new. Apple pay isn't better or all that different from Google's NFC pay, the difference is that they've done the legwork to build a network of vendors. Similarly, whoever can build a model where their service has live streams of TV shows and channels that people want, or something similar, will be fantastically successful. It's not clear, but this may very well do that.

      • Apple pay isn't better or all that different from Google's NFC pay, the difference is that they've done the legwork to build a network of vendors.

        The differences are that Apple Pay is easier to set up (just take a picture of your CC card -- no logging in to your bank's web site), easier to use (just put your finger in the sensor -- no turning on the phone, no launching the Wallet app, no PIN to enter), neither Apple nor the merchant has your real CC number (unlike Google), and the kicker is that Apple does

        • Just use cash, its infinitely easier than all this nonsense.

          • Just use cash, its infinitely easier than all this nonsense.

            Before heading out, you have to check whether you have enough cash on hand. If not, you have to stop by the ATM. To pay, you have to pull out your wallet and look through it for the required bill(s). If you pay with large bills, the cashier may opt to examine the bills carefully to ensure they have the necessary security measures signifying that they're genuine currency.

            If you choose to pay the exact amount, you also have to pull out coins and

    • What's interesting is that it's marketed as a "PlayStation" product when they could have tied their television service to, you know, the televisions that they are known for.

      • What's interesting is that it's marketed as a "PlayStation" product when they could have tied their television service to, you know, the televisions that they are known for.

        Do people even buy Sony TVs any more? Well, the stats say some do, but nowhere near Samsung and LGs numbers. Go into any big box store and the Sony TVs are positioned like the 2nd tier products they are.

    • Sony has exclusive rights to publish software on their own hardware and you think it's stupid that they're only focusing on that user base? Seems like the first logical step for a competitor.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jedidiah ( 1196 )

        Yes it is stupid because computing devices are all about network effects. This applies equally well to game consoles and web services. NO ONE is going to want to be restricted to your hardware for something like this. Apple may be able to pull off that kind of nonsense but Sony just doesn't have the chops for it.

        Plus the Apple examples includes other devices and an ecosystem that's well established already.

        All Sony has is a relatively overpriced game console.

        Sony's service should be EVERYWHERE including And

    • And it's very likely to suffer from Sony's usual concern about not ditrupting Sony's other business interests, so crippling their product - a concernt that Netflix isn't worried about.

    • Re:Stupid (Score:5, Insightful)

      by NotDrWho ( 3543773 ) on Friday November 14, 2014 @10:28AM (#48385217)

      I just worry that all these Netflix wannabes is going to fracture the content market (with content being hopelessly split amongst competing streaming services thanks to a morass of exclusive deals). It's fine now, with just Netflix and Amazon Prime being serious contenders (and Hulu's half-assed effort pulling up the distant rear). But I see a possible future where I've got 300 different streaming services on my box, all of them wanting a monthly fee--and with me trying to remember which one of those 300 has the movie or TV show I want to watch tonight.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by swb ( 14022 )

        I would think that fracturing the market would be less likely the greater the number of competitors.

        The more services there are, the more likely their subscriber base is smaller and the more a content provider is going to charge per view and upfront to guarantee the same revenue they would get releasing content to more outlets.

        There's very little fracturing between Netflix and Amazon now -- both have some self-produced shows and both have a handful of exclusives. Amazon is probably paying a dear price to g

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by gfxguy ( 98788 )
          That may be, but I agree with the GP... what you've described is already a problem, where you need to competing services to get all of the content, despite the fact that 90% of it overlaps. Now imagine Sony content (including TV shows and several motion picture companies they own as well as libraries of content from studios like MGM, which they acquired a while back) only being available from Sony.

      • Re:Stupid (Score:5, Insightful)

        by nine-times ( 778537 ) <nine.times@gmail.com> on Friday November 14, 2014 @12:01PM (#48385979) Homepage

        I just worry that all these Netflix wannabes is going to fracture the content market (with content being hopelessly split amongst competing streaming services thanks to a morass of exclusive deals).

        I think that's the goal here. The content owners have had a sweet deal for years, making money from a lot of different angles. They got people to pay for cable, pay for HBO/Showtime, got them to buy DVDs, and got money from advertisments packed into each of these distribution channels (plus cross-promotional marketing and all kinds of other silliness). Now, after decades of figuring out every little spot they can pull money from, the market changes, and people's expectations change. At this point, people really want (and kind of expect) to be able to get all of their media from streaming, whenever and wherever they like. It totally screws up the business models for the content owners, and it destroys the business models for all the other distribution channels.

        So these businesses have been getting clever on how to fight back. One of the methods is to hamper the Internet's ability to function as a distribution medium. They're in league with the ISPs, and both are working together to prevent anything resembling real competition in that market. Meanwhile, they've dragged their feet in providing real broadband internet, and they've fought against net neutrality, and they've choked the distribution points that would allow digital media from being reliable (e.g. the Netflix/Verizon kerfuffle).

        One of the other pieces of their strategy is to prevent any company from being able to provide anything resembling a "complete library" of TV shows or movies. Each media company splits their library. They give some things to Netflix, some things to Hulu, some things to Amazon, some things to Crackle... etc. They might provide most of the same content to both Netflix and Amazon, for example, but they make sure to provide each with exclusive content, so that if you want to be able to watch whatever you want to watch, you need to pay for both. So while having a "decently sized library" will cost you $9/month, getting "something close to a complete library" will cost $100/month (or whatever the number is) because you have to sign up for several different services. And then, even then, they'll hold back some high-demand content (e.g. Game of Thrones) so that you still need to get cable and premium services to watch what you want to watch. This serves two basic functions: (a) It makes cord-cutting more frustrating, since you can't rely on any set of services to have all the content you want; and (b) it milks extra money from consumers.

        And don't think for a second that it's accidental. All this stuff is part of a coherent strategy on the part of a cartel that includes the media companies who own/produce the content and the ISPs and cable companies that distribute it.

        However, with the "exclusive content" stuff specifically, there is an additional contributing factor. A lot of the people who rise to positions of power in many companies are from marketing and sales. Marketing people need to justify their existence, which means that they have to come up with clever ideas and special promotions, and bla bla bla. Some of this stuff is clever. Some of it is even kind of nice for consumers. However, for the lazy marketing person, the easiest thing to do these days seems to be to develop a cross-promotional deal of some kind, or exclusive rights for some distribution channel. A lot of times, these deals are stupid and a waste of time. They don't necessarily lead to an increase in sales for anyone, but nobody cares because it's just the stuff that marketing people do, and marketing people run the world. But then also, things like "exclusive rights" can be leverage for getting other concessions, e.g. "We'll give you exclusive rights to this big hit movie, but in return, you agree to..." whatever.

      • There's no such thing as Amazon Prime and Hulu outside of the U.S.A.

        Netflix is in 40 countries.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

        I just worry that all these Netflix wannabes is going to fracture the content market (with content being hopelessly split amongst competing streaming services thanks to a morass of exclusive deals). It's fine now, with just Netflix and Amazon Prime being serious contenders (and Hulu's half-assed effort pulling up the distant rear). But I see a possible future where I've got 300 different streaming services on my box, all of them wanting a monthly fee--and with me trying to remember which one of those 300 ha

      • Don't worry, slowly but surely other companies will accept that the time to compete with Netflix was 2003, not 2014. Live streaming is a good area for others to focus, but not if it has to happen from a specific hardware platform. I do like what PBS and some other networks have done, and I appreciate the online availability, it's just hard to monetize. There is room in the market for multiple players, but even Amazon Instant Video has so so far disappointed me. When the say 40,000 titles available to watch

    • No, Sony's service works on iOS devices and they plan on rolling it out across other non-Sony devices.

    • Sony's test launch is limited to the PS3 and PS4 and their selected areas are limited to New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles.

      Netflix works on a lot of devices from a lot of companies [wikipedia.org] and has subscribers in over 40 countries. [wikipedia.org]

      Isn't Crackle owned by Sony anyway? If their "new" service is anything similar, be prepared to view the same stupid two or three ads, every 10 to 15 minutes, cutting right in the middle of scenes with no proper "insert ads here" timing while trying to watch a movie.

    • The real danger is that Sony is also a content producer (Columbia TriStar) [wikipedia.org]. Them fiddling around with a distribution method means there's a risk they will pull their film library from other distributors and put it exclusively on their own network. Want to stream movies like Lawrence of Arabia and The Shawshank Redemption? I'm sorry, they're only available on Playstation Vue. (Netflix is no exception - they produce House of Cards and it's available exclusively via Netflix)

      This sort of vertical integra

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by TheSync ( 5291 )

        Netflix is no exception - they produce House of Cards and it's available exclusively via Netflix.

        No, "House of Cards" is produced by Media Rights Capital [wikipedia.org] and licensed for initial distribution through Netflix.

        In Australia, "House of Cards" was shown on Showcase, a Foxtel-owned premium cable channel. In New Zealand, it was shown on TV3 broadcast channel. In India, it was shown on Zee Cafe cable channel, and in Latvia is was on LNT. It also has been released on DVD and Blu-ray.

        Want to stream movies like Law

    • ha ha! this was my first thought after reading the summary. I have no playstation. i'm sure as hell not going to be swayed into buying one just to watch movies and tv.

    • Now I understand why Sony is on the verge of bankruptcy. Late to the party with underwhelming products.

  • The service is expected to allow users to save their programs for up to 28 days.

    Sounds like they are competing with a dvr.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Sony already has a TV service for the playstation. It is called crackle and it sucks: http://www.crackle.com/ [crackle.com]

    • Still no explanation as to why they closed the UK version in April.

  • It won't work with my universal remote. So I'm just never going to use it for streaming. Roku, AppleTV, etc. work just fine for that, and have way more apps and less complicated interfaces.

  • Cue legal action from a UK cinema chain (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Grench ( 833454 ) on Friday November 14, 2014 @10:25AM (#48385197) Homepage Journal

    There's a cinema chain here in the UK called "Vue"; they have over 80 cinemas as far south as Plymouth to as far north as Inverness. And those are just the ones with Vue branding - they own cinema chains across Europe under different trading names. I wonder if they're thinking of rebranding them all Vue right about now... They have the right to, and hell, I might be tempted to, if I was in their position.

    I can't see them permitting an online streaming movie product (in the UK, at least) under that name, without at least getting some revenue from Sony for the name, or without being beaten down by Sony lawyers in a bitter dispute. Possibly pan-European, if they did suddenly decide "all of our cinemas are going to be called Vue now".

    Also, echoing what others have said - forget trying to compete with Netflix (or whatever Amazon's LoveFilm service is called these days) unless your product can:

    1) work in a web browser on any platform, like Netflix
    2) have a wider selection of media than Netflix
    3) offer this choice for less money than Netflix

    It's just pissing money into the wind if they don't make a product that meets all three of the above goals. Sony knows how to make a lot of money from home entertainment, but they know how to lose a lot too.

    • 1. work in a web browser on any platform or on hardware platforms from multiple vendors.

      Frankly I still find it hard to believe that so many people watch TV shows and movies on their computer, in a web browser on top of that. The living room and big screen TV is a better choice than sitting at your computer desk or on a sofa with a laptop on your legs.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jedidiah ( 1196 )

        > Frankly I still find it hard to believe that so many people watch TV shows and movies on their compute

        Have you looked at the back of a computer in the last 5 or 8 years?

        They include HDMI ports now.

        Once TVs went digital, the distinction between a computer monitor and TV blurred something considerable. Projectors have been very accommodating to computers too (and for much longer).

        • I don't count using the computer as a playback device only as "watching on the computer". You're still watching on a TV.

  • Sad because that one feature would have upped their sales quite a bit.

  • it should read...

    "Sony to attempt to compete with netflix and will fail miserably"

    Sony has ZERO chance to unseat netflix unless they create something that is identical at a significantly lower price. And Sony is known for being greedy bastards so it will come out with a cost that will make it a complete failure.

    the ONLY way they can win is to offer sony titles that are just released or actively playing in theaters.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jandrese ( 485 )
      The big problem is that Sony has a built-in conflict of interest from its Movie division, and will never be able to offer a service as good as Netflix. There will always be internal pressure to not have other studios in there or to put onerous DRM in place.

      • The big problem is that Sony has a built-in conflict of interest from its Movie division

        Conflict of interest can be turned into a synergy. Would "All new Columbia Pictures releases before Netflix gets them" be compelling to anyone?

        There will always be internal pressure [...] to put onerous DRM in place.

        It's a major game console. There's already "onerous DRM in place." This dates back to the Nintendo Entertainment System of the mid-1980s, which added digital restrictions management to avoid the situation where poorly balanced games for Atari 2600 were causing a deep recession in the North American video game market.

        • E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial: The Next Generation

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by jandrese ( 485 )
          That undercuts the existing deals in the Movie division, which is why it won't happen. People spend a lot of movie to get media a few weeks before other competitors, you can't just have the company create a competitor and then give them preferential access. There is a huge complex web of relationships with every release. If this were an easy problem every studio would already have their own version of Netflix for their own releases, but such a service would necessarily be slower, more expensive, and more
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by cdrudge ( 68377 )

      I figured it out.

      This is them whenever they see money, period. mine!

      Really? Who would have ever have though a corporation would want to make money.

      • There's a different between wanting to make money and thinking that the money should be yours just because you feel entitled to it.

  • If so, they may have just lost a sale. I was considering a PlaystationTV, but I don't know if I want to pay that much just to play Vita games and watch Crunchyroll on my TV.

    • Crunchyroll is available on Apple TV, as well as Netflix.

      • Yes, and there is Roku etc.Unfortunately, none of them play Vita games.. I have a slew of devices ar home that can run Netflix/Crunchyroll, but was considering a PlaystationTV because it would be a tiny, highly portable device to lug to the camp in the summer etc., and I have Vita games that I could enjoy on it (I don't actually enjoy playing them on a Vita near as much as I would on a TV).

        If all I want is a small Netflix/Crunchyroll box, I can just go buy a Chromecast or Roku stick or something (Walmart se

  • Not a Netflix competitir (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    This article is mis-titled. Vue is not a Netflix competitor, it's a cable TV competitor. We're taking about live TV channels people.

  • End of netflix on PS (Score:5, Insightful)

    by CimmerianX ( 2478270 ) on Friday November 14, 2014 @10:59AM (#48385431)

    I can almost 100% guarantee that Sony will pull the Netflix functionality from all PS models.

    Just like how the PS4 will no longer stream from a home media server because they started to offer their own streaming music service under the guise of "it's a more intuitive and streamlined process for the customer', we will see sony replace netflix with Vue citing the same bullshit.

    Don't think they will? How's your PS3 linux partition? Oh wait, sony made that disappear when it suited them too.

    • Well, really, this has been Sony's MO for years -- they are entirely about vendor lock in, pushing their own proprietary crap, and refusing to use anybody else's technology.

      Which is precisely why many of us won't buy anything from Sony.

      Between Beta, their mini disc format, stripping Linux functionality from the PS3, and now this ... Sony has more or less demonstrated them to be entirely "our stuff shall have supreme dominance at the expense of the consumer".

      Sorry Sony, not interested in your crap, and haven

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by hodet ( 620484 )

      I don't own a PS but they seriously disabled connecting to a home media server? Why people suffer these locked in solutions is beyond me.

    • I don't think they will, because linux on PS3 affected few of their core gaming users, but removing Netflix would affect many of them. Also, antitrust. Besides, the competition has embraced multiple streaming services — Microsoft has their own service, but that hasn't prevented them from supporting several others. If Sony kicks off the competition, they'll be the only ones to do that, and they'll lose all but the most diehard franchise customers.

    • Sony doesn't always take stuff away from us though. Remember that free rootkit a few years ago?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Svartalf ( 2997 )

      There is a reason I am keen on seeing if Valve can manage something with SteamBox/SteamOS/Linux. I'm a bit tired of the BS and lies about this stuff.

  • The once proud technology behemouth, Sony, has failed at nearly every lame attempt they've made on everything lately except the PS4. This will probably backfire on them as well as many of the other brilliant ideas they've had. Instead of trying to be an "also ran", they should start innovating again. But it's probably already too late. Somebody should just hand them a shovel.

  • In other news Sony announces Vue's closing in 2016. I have this feeling that they won't be able to leave their 20th century media ideals behind. They will be young, hip, attempt to appeal to millennials but in the end will do stupid things like release the best stuff on BlueRay first. I am also willing to bet that there will be an element of nickel and diming where they have normal, premium, super premium, special event fees, and all kinds of weird location related blackouts.

    Basically it will be a bunch o

  • I welcome another streaming service. Why? Because it increases the alternative options for cable customers. Consider:
    Netflix ($9) + Hulu Plus ($8) + Amazon Prime ($8.25) + Sony ("competitive") = ~$35
    Comcast's Digital Preferred (where I live): $86 (not counting taxes) + $10 HD fee + $8 DVR fee = $104

    There's some overlap with the streaming services, but each one offers something a little different, and customers can get a pretty broad selection. Combine with ad-hoc Redbox rentals for hardware viewing of re

    • I welcome another streaming service. Why? Because it increases the alternative options for cable customers.
      Consider:
      Netflix ($9) + Hulu Plus ($8) + Amazon Prime ($8.25) + Sony ("competitive") = ~$35
      Comcast's Digital Preferred (where I live): $86 (not counting taxes) + $10 HD fee + $8 DVR fee = $104

      Lets project that into the future:
      Netflix ($9) + Hulu Plus ($8) + Amazon Prime ($8.25) + Sony ("competitive") + Comcast SuperFriendlyLoveCustomer Internet service ($86) + Comcast Modem fee ($10) = ~ $131

      Yeah, I am looking forward to the future /s

      • I didn't include the cost of internet, since for me personally, that part would be the same either way; others may have a choice of ISP (Comcast/DSL/FiOS/Google). Perhaps you're suggesting that Comcast will raise their internet access prices, and that may in fact happen; but it's hard to factor into a services comparison like this. It's worth noting that Comcast gives a ~$20 "discount" on their internet access for also subscribing to digital cable, so that would need to be added as well. And at $10/mo fo

  • Netflix has branched into countries outside of the US already - Playstation Vue is for "select customers" in 3 US cities?

    Add in the platform limits (PS3/PS4 vs everything), content (Netflix has a semi-decent selection already) and name recognition (Netflix is known globally as TV), and this thing is much too little, much too late.

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