Sony PlayStation 3 owners soon will be able to view episodes from 11 HBO series on demand, Sony announced. The deal will make shows like "Big Love," "Curb Your Enthusiasm," and "Entourage," available to PS3 owners when they become available on DVD, generally just less than a year after they air.
"We're offering media companies another place to monetize their content with an attractive audience that is growing fast, and it all fits within their existing business mode," Sony PlayStation chief executive Jack Tretton told the Wall Street Journal. "This medium is here to stay," Tretton said. "[Media companies] can either find a way to monetize it or bang their heads against a wall and hope it goes away. The smarter companies are going with the former option."
Said analyst Ben Piper, of Strategy Analytics: "From a revenue perspective, it represents just a sliver at this point, but cable companies and other pay-TV operators would be ill-advised to ignore this as a threat."
The PS3 deal is the latest in a string of agreements that have chipped away at pay-TV's control of content.
For more:
- see this WSJ article
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