Sony’s big-screen Bravia TV sets will include access to the ABC’s impressive iView streaming TV service, but only some iView content will be available and it’ll all be metered…
Internet-based TV continues to move into the living room and onto your big-screen TV set and today’s announcement of a hook-up between Sony and the ABC TV’s
iView service is particularly welcome given the strength of the iView channel, which currently has over 175 shows on the menu.
Sony will built iView access into its new Bravia Internet-connected tellies as well as its Net-friendly Blu-ray players set for launch in the middle of next month
ABC iView: coming to a Sony-equipped living room near you
Unlike the current browser-based iView service available through the Sony Playstation 3, the Bravia and Blu-ray rigs will support a dedicated app built for the Sony IPTV platform. (The ABC has also released an iView widget for Web pages, available for download from
http://www.abc.net.au/services/widgets.)
ABC iView widget: now available for any Web page
There are a few caveat, however, which will turn ‘leading edge’ into ‘bleeding edge’. The ABC says that ‘formatting issues’ will mean the main drawcards for iView as a catchup service – such as the 7pm News, The 7.30 Report, Four Corners, Lateline, Lateline Business, The Midday Report and Foreign Correspondent – will be missing at launch and won’t be available until the ABC’s boffins have sorted things out.
Another drawback is that even if your ISP offers
unmetered access to iView (as is the case with Internode, iiNet and iPrimus, among others), iView content streamed onto your TV set will still be counted against your monthly data allowance. This is likely to see more than a few households hitting and then blasting past their cap.
According to
Gizmodo, the reason for this is “none of the (Bravia) TV applications are browser based, so the iView team has had to craft the application with TV manufacturers.”
That means a different serving protocol, “which in turn affects how the data is sent” explains Gizmodo’s Nick Broughall. “The content itself is mirrored on two different servers now – one for browsers and one for applications.” The server with the browser content is free for the ABC’s iView partner ISPs but the one streaming the application content isn’t.