Sony Wants To Take Your PC Video Away and Replace It With A Bravia

Well, they're not going to give you a BRAVIA they're going to give Europeans the ability to watch downloadable content on their BRAVIA TVs without needing a PC any longer. The new series of BRAVIA TVs, Blu-Ray players and home cinema systems will feature BRAVIA Internet Video.Sony has realized that people are watching more Internet video than ever before and perhaps fearing a loss of profit due to slower sales of their AV equipment have decided to take an active step forward. New BRAVIA owners will now be able to watch Internet video right from their TVs starting early next year. No more will you need to huddle the family around the LCD panel in the home office to see the latest online video sensation. Plus they're already working on deals with makor broadcasters across Europe including ARD in Germany, M6 in France, Mediaset in Italy, RTVE, Antena3 and LaSexta in Spain and Five in the UK to build an advanced TV viewing experiences on a trial basis.

According to the information available BRAVIA Internet Video will also offer a wide variety of free on-demand video content from Internet sites such as YouTube and Dailymotion.

I find this all very interesting as they have let their own online video service, Crackle, lapse into mediocrity. Or maybe it's just mediocre here in Europe as there's an extremely limited amount of content available on the site for us and errors showing up when attempting to get to most content.

Sony is not the only company doing this. Many LCD TV manufacturers (HP, LG, Vizio) are including networking and other ports as well as Wi-Fi capabilities into their upcoming models. It almost makes me glad I didn't buy a new one yet and might now wait until the all-new Wi-Fi ready HDTV LCD TVs are ready. We're always a bit on the slow side here in the Czech Republic.

It makes one wonder. If Internet video and broadcast TV are going to be available on the same device, will we finally be able to start standardizing the encoding and delivery of video and eventually need only one for both? I certainly hope so for our sakes.

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