Bring the net to your TV: Sony Bravia leads the way

Sony announced they’ve added some new partners for their connected Bravia TVs. These TVs, when hooked up to broadband, bring the net experience to your living room. Sony is doing this in an extremely controlled fashion.

How controlled? One at a time, baby. That is right: they added CBS which uses Flash 10 for content, as does Hulu but Sony does not have a partnership with them. You’ll have access to their partners via a special link, not a browser. Curious?

Of course you are! So was I. So I asked Sony and got:

We don’t disclose software for the device. Sony works with each content partner to provide the best user experience possible. The CBS channel was developed exclusively for the Sony BRAVIA Internet Video service and is not in any way affiliated with other services or devices like Hulu.

Current partners include Slacker, Amazon Video On Demand, YouTube, Dailymotion, CBS; Yahoo!, Men.Style.com, Sports Illustrated, blip.tv, CondeNet’s Style.com, Epicurious, Wired.com, Concierge.com channels, Sony Pictures’ Crackle, and more. Big brands are getting into this.

This raises some serious questions in my head. Questions like:

• Could a Hulu partnership be in the works?
• Who else might be included in this partnership
• Could Sony be charting a new course forward by cutting out local affiliates and bringing content straight from there studios to their TVs?
• Would it mean big trouble for the likes of cable companies? Would Sony care?

If you’ve got any answers, let’s talk about them in the comments.

Source [ecoustics]