Phoenician_Viking
Banned
Been trying to get a fix on what's going on this morning. Most people who would know about it are pretty tight lipped, but here's the story so far:
Sony are talking to Viacom, Disney, Fox and Time Warner over a massive shakeup of IPTV. The service would almost be like cable, but over the internet. The channels and content from these major companies would be offered via Sony's new PS-TV service (available via PS4, PS3, and a bunch of other Sony devices, plus Android and iOS), consumers would pay Sony a monthly sub fee and Sony pay for content licencing/carriage over PS TV. For Sony it gets them around the age old problem of not being able to own their own network because they are Japanese and by partnering with TW, they are looking to cut a deal for cheap bandwidth. One of the guys also expects them to cut deals with AT&T and other major ISPs for prime bandwidth (non-neutral internet).
Finally, he said Sony don't expect to make any money from the venture for at least 5 years which they think will be all about hooking in consumers and content providers, stupidly Sony would have to licence their own content from Starz, but at a reduced rate because of certain clauses in their deal. He said after the 5 year period Sony think they will have a large enough consumer base to dictate terms to content providers and ISPs to increase margins, and their content licencing deal with Starz comes to an end so that would represent a major annual saving. He said Sony want to launch Sony TV channels and Sony Movie channels with all of their own content which is vast because it includes Screen Gems.
What a stupid plan! These companies will be on other devices as well. There´s no way that they will be exclusive to Sony, because of competitive reasons. So making profit as soon as the service starts should be priority for Sony.