Sony Bravia Internet Video review

Sony's new IPTV platform is a bit hit and miss

Bravia Internet Video: LoveFilm
The LoveFilm interface is excellent, making it easy to browse the movies on offer

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Sony's platform badly underperforms when it comes to social networking. There's no Twitter, Facebook, Flickr or eBay – but crucially all are promised shortly.

Blip.tv's quirky videos – some in HD – are mildly diverting, though the rest of the widgets are instantly forgettable; FordModels involves models showing us their photographs, Howcast.com gives tips on everything (How To Maximize Your Internship and Pick Up a Girl at the Beach are typical), ON Networks offers HD videos of US tourist sites, GolfLink.com gives online lessons, Livestrong.com does fitness videos, Singing Fool plays new music videos from hip-hop to New Country, and Tagesschau and Deutsche Welle both offer German news.

Sony bravia internet video: xmb

All very foreign, but there are some nifty audio widgets, the highlight of which is a National Public Radio (NPR) widget. This US radio station represents the very best of US media content and streams both serious, light-hearted and educational broadcasts and podcasts across politics, economics, technology, history, business and world affairs.

That includes its own How We Got Here (world affairs with historical background and context) and The World In Words (in one episode America quite rightly wonders why Brits insist that the rest of the world uses its own cliché-ridden terminology for 'the beautiful game') alongside the BBC World Service's World Have Your Say podcast. There are thousands of hours listening here, and it's mostly top-notch journalism.

Jamie Carter

Jamie is a freelance tech, travel and space journalist based in the UK. He’s been writing regularly for Techradar since it was launched in 2008 and also writes regularly for Forbes, The Telegraph, the South China Morning Post, Sky & Telescope and the Sky At Night magazine as well as other Future titles T3, Digital Camera World, All About Space and Space.com. He also edits two of his own websites, TravGear.com and WhenIsTheNextEclipse.com that reflect his obsession with travel gear and solar eclipse travel. He is the author of A Stargazing Program For Beginners (Springer, 2015),