Sony Bring Online Music Streaming/Movie Rentals To Europe – Powered By Qriocity
Written by Rob Nichols on September 2, 2010 · Filed under Internet, Tech
Sony has had its IFA press conference today where it has unveiled no shortage of new ideas to the European market; the first of which being the transition of Qriocity into Europe, as well as plans to develop the service even further.
Qriocity, has been in development by Sony since November 2009 and the basic principle behind it is the streaming and distribution of its various forms of media. Formerly called Sony Online Services, but recently rebranded to Qriocity, the service allows consumers to enjoy high quality media across a multitude of devices.
So What Does It Include?
Well, the idea is that Qriocity will power the distribution of videos, music, games and even e-books in time, in conjunction with various devices, such as the PlayStation 3, Sony E-Reader and I imagine eventually the Sony Ericsson Walkman mobile phones.
However, the big announcement coming from IFA in Berlin today, is that from this autumn the ‘Video On Demand Powered by Qriocity’ service will be available in the UK, France, Germany, Italy and Spain.
Video On Demand Powered by Qriocity
The official name for the service, whilst extraordinarily verbose, I am grateful to as it really saves me from explaining what it does. However, just to go into a little more detail, it allows customers to choose from hundreds of box office hits from all the big names, such as 20th Century Fox, Lionsgate, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, NBC Universal, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures, The Walt Disney Company, Warner Bros. as well as some other smaller studios.
Thankfully a lot of the content will be available in high definition in addition to the standard stuff and call can be rented from Qriocity via your internet connected Sony BRAVIA HD TV’s or Sony Blu-Ray players, or home theatre systems. PS3’s also have access to the service as well as primarily VAIO’s, but also many other PC’s. The long term plan is to “bring the service to Sony’s portable devices”, which led me to believe we may be on the brink of seeing a Sony tablet soon enough.
Music Unlimited Powered by Qriocity
Another service unveiled is the equally over-elaborately named ‘Music Unlimited powered by Qriocity ‘music streaming service. Basically does exactly as it would appear on the face of it, by streaming a huge library of music to your Sony devices through the ‘cloud’.
“We are excited to offer our customers high quality, cloud-based entertainment experiences across many of Sony’s network-enabled devices,” said Kazuo Hirai, President of Networked Products & Services Group, Sony Corporation. “Services ‘powered by Qriocity’ will revolutionise the way that users play, listen, watch, share, communicate, learn, discover and create their digital entertainment content.”
No details on the availability of the music streaming service, but we are assured that Sony will announce plans in the not too distant future, but the question is will they beat the rumoured Apple iTunes music streaming service and how will it compare the the already established services such as Sky Songs, Carphone Warehouse’s Music Anywhere and of course Spotify?
Summary
So, whether you like it or not, with a huge name like Sony on board the cloud future we appear to be heading for has become an increasing reality. Media streaming makes a lot of sense, but if you are like me then storing media locally is a preferable alternative.
