Recently I wrote about “The tend towards an open STB continues.”
This trend has just been turned into a reality with Sony announcing that by Christmas, 90% or all TV on sale will be Internet ready, and to quote the Sony release..
Sony will embrace open standards “to improve interoperability among all of our customers’ devices.”
See this report “Sony sets sights on global networked entertainment“.
2 responses so far ↓
1 Philip Hodgetts // Jun 30, 2008 at 10:37 am
Yes, interoperate with all of Sony’s business units and business partners. Completely closed to everyone else, just like today’s TV business.
I see nothing in Sony’s announcements that doesn’t have Sony as the access gatekeeper to their televisions. That’s step backward.
Philip
2 JamieG // Jun 30, 2008 at 10:50 am
Philip, I totally understand where you are coming at. But the information from the informTV website implies that it will use OPEN STANDARDS to archive this Interoperability.
Now, by nature Sony uses protocols that work only between Sony devices. But to use Open STandard protocols means the complete reverse.
So, really what is going on here is the question. I tend to believe that the consumer electronics industry have realised that they have to let the devices play content they already have. DivX files, H.264 files located on a Media Server or file server.. As DRM is dead, not playing open codec is also a dead idea.
Still, Sony has in the fast gone completely against the trend with its dead before born proporetiry MP3 type implementation (Forget name).
But likely, Sony will make these TVs play open standards based files, as the report does indicate, and really. That is the key to this announcement. The TV will have a STB in them, and they will play non-locked-up content.
But YES, Sony is going for a land grab for setting a subscribe and pay for content platform out to the masses. This, I feel, is the new race for the incumbents and digital media.
James
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