Pioneer just announced their SyncTV on-line television download service. The ad-supported, subscription-based service costs between $2 to $4 per channel per month or $2 for any show you wish to download outside of your subscription -- there's no mention of streaming capability (though it's not excluded, either). While details are soft, downloaded video is said to offer DVD-like, "home-theater quality" with surround-sound capabilities and in some cases, hi-def resolution. They will be PC and Mac compatible wrapped in a Sony, Philips, Samsung, and Panasonic (note: not Microsoft or Apple) supported "Marlin" DRM wrapper. As such, expect to see portable players, television, and set top boxes from at least one of these manufactures sometime early next year in support of the nascent service. A private test begins today with a public beta set to launch in January. Unfortunately, the channels and shows available over SyncTV were not revealed today so we'll just have to wait to see how this develops.
Update: The
SyncTV site is now up with more information and beta pre-registration.
posted Nov 19th 2007 at 4:59AM
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Orikinla Osinachi @ Nov 19th 2007 5:20AM
How can Sync TV compete digitally with Apple?
Maximiliam @ Nov 19th 2007 6:24AM
Glad it is not out of sync. ;)
DAZA @ Nov 19th 2007 6:55AM
Gotta say, perhaps one of the lamest names for such a service. Oh well.. shame about the DRM but $2-4/m for some channels sounds reasonable, depends on the content of course.
Mark Nelson @ Nov 19th 2007 8:33AM
I'm really glad they are reinforcing the $2 price point for downloaded movies. I also like the idea of a $2 per month channel subscription (hmmn, better hit the site and see how they define a 'channel'). I hope they allow advanced users to precisely choose the amount of bandwith used for the stream (75K, 150K, 300K, 500K+) and also enable users with slower connections to watch high-quality streams by letting streams download to the player (youtube, stage6, etc).
LPXXFAINTXX @ Nov 19th 2007 10:42AM
That looks a lot like the Zune marketplace.
Candace @ Nov 30th 2007 4:44PM
Still love my Slingbox... http://www.slingmedia.com
Already paying for cable? Have a computer? Don't want to pay subscription fees to watch TV on it? Slingbox and SlingPlayer are AWESOME.