There has been a lot of development of late surrounding Internet-connected TV’s, with more and more services such as Google TV tipped as the next big thing in home entertainment.
Unfortunately, most of the progress being made in the industry, including Google TV, is US-only for now, so it’s about time someone on this humble island nation of ours grasped the opportunity and provided consumers with some serious functionality on our IPTV’s.
Enter Sony, who has long been a pioneer in the television industry and once again have come to our rescue with the introduction of BBC’s iPlayer to their range of Internet-connected Sony BRAVIA TV’s. Clearly, they felt that the World Cup streaming to Sony BRAVIA TVs and Blu-Ray players went well during the summer – perhaps that helped them develop this service implementation.
Christian Brown, Senior Category Marketing Manager, Sony, said: “We are delighted to be able to offer BRAVIA customers this added entertainment functionality giving users the ability to watch and manage their favourite programmes at the click of a button. We are really excited to be partnering with the BBC to bring it’s fantastic service to the 2010 BRAVIA television range”.
The iPlayer will be accessible on all internet connected BRAVIA TV’s which feature Freeview HD built-in, as well as the 2010 range of Blu-ray players and home cinema systems, via the BRAVIA Internet Video and finally through the Autumn range of VAIO PC’s via a pre-installed desktop iPlayer widget we covered last month.
The service will be accessible through the Xross-media bar that we know Sony hold in the highest regard and implement on the majority of their devices, with the exclusion of PCs.
So while this might not be Google TV, Hulu or Netflix, US services which are hugely impressive for the most part, it goes some way to providing us Brits with popular TV content viewed by millions daily on an on-demand basis. Perhaps we’ll see access to the likes of Lovefilm (online TV/movie rental service) being added in the future – no doubt this would be a good feature for both companies?
Do you like the prospect of viewing Internet-based TV programming directly on your TV? Which other online TV services would you like to see added onto your TV?