While Netflix, Amazon Prime, BBC iPlayer and all that lot are great, it’s not particularly easy to try and keep tabs on what is available on each one if you subscribe or have access to multiple free streaming services. Sony are taking a leaf out of the books of Amazon’s TV sticks, Apple TV and the like by combining all of these services so you don’t have to hop in and out of each app.
It’s live now on PlayStation 4, with the TV & Video section replaced with an app of sorts. There’s now a top bar that lets you dip into all of the pre-existing apps, but below that you have a variety of featured films and TV shows in Netflix or Amazon-esque categories.
Right now, there’s not a lot of cross-service proliferation, with only PS Store and Now TV getting featured in the handful of sections, which kind of defeats the purpose of this (unless Sony’s real intention is to push the content on the PS Â Store) but this should grow to tap into others soon.
This is now available in Australia, Austria, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Norway, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom.
Do you watch a lot of tele through your PS4? What do you think of this little reorganisation effort from Sony?
Source: press release
Tuffcub
Maybe the should fix the bloody All4 app first.
MrYd
What’s wrong with the All4 app? I use it a lot (mostly for foreign stuff from that nice man Walter) and never have any problems.
SamBeThyName
The All4 app has always been broken. It freezes after ads on the PS4 and the app on PS3 often crashes the machine requiring a hard reboot and then reformatting the HD
MrYd
Never had any problems with it here. And much better than watching anything live on real TV, since it seems to happily replace 20 minutes of adverts with about 2 minutes at most. Not counting the 407 Lexus adverts every single thing I ever watch on it has.
Had more problems with the Netflix app, which every so often decides to pop up a message saying “Oh, it’s all too much for me!” and then reloads itself.
Severn2j
If it works as intended, this will be great. I’ve never watched TV via the PS4, because there are Netflix/Prime apps already built into the TV. If they can integrate Kodi/Plex as well for local content, that would be perfect..
BTW, does anyone know if the PS4 streaming apps support 4K streams?
TSBonyman
I’ll have to check it out for myself to be certain but i anticipate i’ll be feeling somewhat curmudgeonly about this change.
TSBonyman
I guess this doesn’t apply to Ireland? We don’t have TV Now here, nor can we rent or purchase movies through the PS Store, so my video folder hasn’t changed to the new format. Yay!
double-o-dave
I use my TV for Netflix as for some reason, the HDR doesn’t work in the Netflix App on the PS4 Pro (or didn’t the last time I checked).
I’d also feel more inclined to rent movies off the store if the streaming service did 4k.
MrYd
Before, it behaved almost, but not quite, exactly like any other folder you might have set up. Not quite because it inexplicably took a long time to load all the icons.
Now it seems to be an actual proper app, and somehow loads quicker than before, which is at least something good from it.
2/3 of the screen being adverts for things on the PS store or Now TV seems slightly excessive though. And what if you have the Sky app with a login that may or may not belong to you, but no Now TV login? There’s something interesting from Sky advertised, click on it, and then it loads the wrong app you can’t watch it in. (That’s probably more the fault of Sky for having 2 separate apps though)
So a terrible “improvement” except for it’s a bit faster. Oh, and if you had a theme installed with an icon for it, that’s now broken and changed to the default icon.
ron_mcphatty
Great idea, I’ve got a Now voucher so might plug that in to see what it looks like. Get Amazon, Netflix and all the UK channel apps to work and I’ll be very impressed.
camdaz
Same here, if it all works together I’ll use it more. At the moment I only use Amazon, mainly for its 4K stuff.
JR.
Never had any problems with the old version but ok.