Sony’s PlayStation Vue Brings Streaming Live TV to Your PS4 Without a Cable Subscription

Cable TV is expensive. Between the service costs, broadcast fees, regional sports fees, and equipment costs, you end up shelling out a heck of a lot of dough each month just to watch The Real Housewives of New Jersey.

But Sony might have the solution to your cable conundrum with its new PlayStation Vue service.

A new Vue-ing experience

Available starting today in New York City, Chicago, and Philadelphia, Vue is a Web-based cable-TV streaming service that brings your favorite television shows and channels to your PlayStation 3 or PlayStation 4.

To be clear, we’re talking about live TV just like you get from a cable or satellite provider, sent over the Internet to your PlayStation. p.

Don’t have a PlayStation? Sony says it also has plans to release a version of Vue for Apple’s iOS operating system and hopes to bring the service to other devices in the future.

Content

What sets Vue apart from similar over-the-top services such as Dish’s Sling TV is the sheer number of channels available through Sony’s offering.

The company has deals in place for 85 channels from networks including CBS, Discovery Communications, Fox, Fox News Networks, NBCUniversal, Scripps Networks Interactive, Turner, Viacom, and AMC Networks.

Sling TV, on the other hand, has just 39 channels. What’s more, Sling TV doesn’t include broadcast networks like NBC, Fox, and CBS. Neither Vue nor Sling TV has ABC.

Dish’s offering does, however, come with ESPN, which is popular among younger viewers. Vue doesn’t have access to ESPN.

Interface

If you’ve used a PlayStation 3 or PlayStation 4, you’ll feel right at home with Vue. The home screen is laid out with the app’s Timeline, My Shows, Favorite Channels, Live TV, Recommended, and Feature Shows categories available in a vertical row on the left side of the screen.

Above that, you have the Search option, Explore, Guide, and Tools. If you designate a show as a favorite by highlighting it and pressing the R1 button on your controller, Vue will automatically record every occurrence of the program in Sony’s cloud-based DVR, where they’ll stay for 28 days.

Sony says you can make favorites of up to 500 different shows. You’ll probably want to avoid this, though, as watching that much TV will likely result in your physically melding with your couch, forming some kind of sentient human-couch monster.

Overall, the Vue’s interface is very snappy. Scrolling through season after season of The Simpsons was easy, and searching for specific shows was a breeze.

What’s more, unlike Sling TV, your PlayStation Vue account can be used to stream different shows on up to three separate devices (one PS4 and two PS3s) at the same time. You can add your Sling TV account to multiple devices, but you can’t watch different shows at the same time.

Monthly cost

So how does Vue stack up against a comparable cable-TV subscription?

According to Sony, a basic Access subscription costs $50 per month and gets you more than 50 channels, among them CBS, Fox, NBC, AMC, Comedy Central, Cartoon Network, and CNN.

Step up to the Core package for $60 and you’ll get BTN, the Golf Channel, and TCM. New York subscribers also get the Yes Network, while Philly subscribers get Comcast SportsNet Philadelphia and Chicago subscribers get Comcast SportsNet Chicago.

The top-of-the-line Elite package costs $70 and gets you all of the Access and Core channels, as well as a host of family, lifestyle, and music channels.

Of course, in order to use Vue, you need to have a broadband Internet connection, which is additional expense.

Vue vs. Sling TV

Sling TV, on the other hand, starts at a less expensive $20 per month for 17 channels, including ESPN, ESPN 2, AMC, Food Network, CNN, IFC, and HGTV.

For an extra $5 you can get Sling TV’s Sports Extra package, which includes six additional ESPN networks and the Universal Sports Network. If you’re more interested in movies, you can pay $5 to get the Hollywood Extra package, which gets you Epix 1, Epix 2, Epix 3, Epix Drive-In, and Sundance TV.

The $5 Kids Extra package gets you more kid-friendly programing, while the $5 News & Info Extra adds HLN, Bloomberg, the Cooking Channel, and the DIY Network.

If you want every channel option, you’ll end up paying $40 per month, which is cheaper than the basic Vue package but has 11 fewer channels than Sony’s option, and it doesn’t include a DVR option.

Vue vs. Comcast

Sign up for Comcast’s Xfinity TV Digital Starter package, and you’ll get 140 channels for $49.99 per month for the first 12 months. Once that grace period is up, the price jumps to between $68 and $70 per month, depending on where you live.

While that’s a lot of channels, the package costs more than twice as much as you’d pay for the top-shelf Sling TV offering and about $10 more than PlayStation Vue’s Elite package.

Outlook

PlayStation Vue is a wonderful app that those looking to cut their cable cords will certainly appreciate. At $50 to $70, the cost per month is fairly high, especially when there are options like Hulu Plus out there for $7.99 per month.

But if you absolutely want to say farewell to your cable company and need live TV and a nearly limitless DVR, PlayStation Vue is worth checking out.

Email Daniel at dhowley@yahoo-inc.com; follow him on Twitter at @DanielHowley or on Google+.