Sky Considering Video On Demand For Consoles

Sky's OnDemand director Griff Parry says that the British television company is currently considering offering its video-on-demand online services through consoles. "I think games consoles are an interesting opportunity," says Parry, according to a report from UK technology site TechRadar. "It is something that we are exploring." He notes, however, that consoles like the PlayStation 3 cannot currently play Sky Player, Sky's subscription service for streaming its programs to PCs, as the service uses Microsoft's Silverlight to protect its content from unlicensed redistribution. Sky's history working with Sony and the growing number of console-owning households could push the company to eventually pursue the opportunity further. "We have a relationship with PlayStation because we launched the PSP service (GoView), so I look at consoles, and there are a lot of them, and they are obviously connected to televisions and the internet," says Parry. The OnDemand director's comments come a week after research and consulting firm The Diffusion Group (TDG) published a report predicting that consumers will eventually abandon their local cable companies or satellite TV operators, turning to video game consoles, such as Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, for on-demand video services. According to TDG, some 190 million households will own a next-generation video game console by 2012, of which 80 percent will connect their console to the internet. The firm forecasts that 75 percent of those connected-console households will use console-based video services at least a couple times each week.