Sony rolls out TVNZ OnDemand for PS3
The game console as a content centre takes a step closer as Sony announces it will stream TVNZ OnDemand content via the PlayStation 3
Tuesday, April 20 2010 || News || BY Tom Donovan
Last month OnDemand streamed more than 1.5 million episodes to 316,000 users, a market which could potentially grow by a third with more than 100,000 PS3 consoles throughout New Zealand homes.
The new service was an open secret, as a previous PS3 software update had accidentally (and temporarily) loaded the OnDemand option into the PS3 menu. The move represents another step in Sony's attempt to position the PS3 as a central entertainment hub for the home, rather than being pigeonholed into the high-end gaming niche market. Other content avenues Sony have explored are social gamer networking and music video streaming through the services PS Home and VidZone respectively. The high price tag is still a big deterrent to consumers, and although the console touts a Blu-Ray drive, how many people do you know right now with a Blu-Ray collection?
It’s clear the service has been developed with a strong eye to advertising possibilities. Hour - long episodes are divided into seven chapters, four for half - hour episodes. Each chapter break will feature an ad, and targeted advertising is the obvious next step. At the media launch event in Auckland, a featured ad for Gillette's "Gamer" razor played during an episode of "Pacific". A peppy animated Roger Federer (looking like he stepped right out of Top Spin! or whatever the latest tennis game incarnation is) brandished the “sophisticated, high-tech” blade which allows “every man to get in the game”. Whether that game would take place on an actual court outside, is doubtful.
It’s early days, and there is still a lot of potential to be explored here - Sony may try ways of importing user profile information into the OnDemand service to further tailor ad content. The navigation controls are a little clunky, and the system struggled with running an episode and loading an ad at the same time.
So what about costs? At the moment there’s no extra outlay required to access the new service, but streaming hi-def video is hungry for bandwidth. To offset this, TVNZ has formed partnerships with the ISPs Orcon and Snap, 'unmetered partners' that will not tally OnDemand video towards monthly customer usage. As time goes on and demand for hi-def video streaming increases it will be interesting to see what other ISPs make similar arrangements, and whether consoles become central players in the move to bring on-demand content away from the computer and into the lounge.
