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BIV and regions

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cxManiac
New

BIV and regions

I understand that there is interest in different video content in different regions of the world, and that Sony is doing hard to keep users satisfied. But, I thik that some regions are being neglected.

I'm, for example, living in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and content I can watch here with my CX520 is rather poor when compared with the one users in UK get. I don't even see that muzu.tv that has been announced here to be available to everyone. Qriocity is not available too. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy my Bravia very much, Facebook, Skype, browsing are great, but I know there is much more this great TV can give us.

Can we expect that Sony will take care of content for us users in smaller markets?

1 REPLY 1
profile.country.en_GB.title
Catmambo
Contributor

Hi

Its a very fair question and one that's impossible to answer with a yes/no answer. So apologies for the slightly longer answer but I think it deserves a decent response. Just to contextualise, I look after the UK services and so can't directly comment on the Bosnian development, but I can certainly share some of the challenges and thought processes.

Due to the nature of services like the BBC in the UK who are a globally renown broadcaster, we are pretty fortunate to have a lot of resource thrown in our direction to deliver services like iPlayer. I'm not sure any other country has a broadcaster the size of the BBC, funded in this way providing such a high quality of television - they are truly unique.

Broadband penetration also plays a key role in this. There would be little point in developing a load of services for countries where broadband speeds and penetrations are very low.

Rights is probably the biggie. Where possible - we roll out services to as many countries as possible as it means relatively less work for more eyeballs - you mention Muzu and that's a good example. I think its now available in 7 or 8 countries across Europe. The rights are controlled by Muzu and not Sony. This is the key point as Sony just act as a gateway to partners - we have no editorial or commercial say in the content that goes up there. So there may be a reason why Muzu don't have the rights to your area - I'm sure they would love to reach as many territories as possible, but it may be for cost reasons its not yet viable. Its a little bit chicken and egg.

Broadcasters may choose not be be on the service as well - having done this for a few years now and been to more broadcaster meetings than I've had hot dinners, the responses can vary massively. Some just aren't geared up to deliver video streams, some make unrealistic commercial demands, some are pursuing their own digital strategy - reasons vary.

These are very early days for connected services and in the same way its taken television years to evolve from one channel to multi-channel and the Internet to grow from one page to billions of pages, it will take a bit of time for connected services to do the same, albeit a far far shorter timeframe. Indeed the BBC were saying at a conference the other day, they expect around 50% of their shows to be time-shifted (not watched live) within about 5 years.

Hope this helps clarify things a bit