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Sony's Crackle expands service to PS3 consoles, Bravia products and Roku

By | March 30, 2011, 7:28am PDT

Summary: Crackle is bringing its catalog of ad-supported movies to many more devices beyond Google TV.

Crackle is bringing its catalog of ad-supported movies to many more devices beyond Google TV.

A subsidiary project of Sony Pictures, Crackle has a limited library of films, including The Da Vinci Code, Ghostbusters, and Big Daddy. But given that the service is ad-supported, streaming these full-length films is free to the viewer. Plus, Crackle promises that 20 new movies from Columbia Pictures, TriStar Pictures, Screen Gems and Sony Pictures Classics will be added each month.

Of course, you’ll need one of the following devices first. Crackle is now supported on PlayStation 3 consoles, Roku set-top boxes, as well as Internet-connected Bravia HDTVs and Blu-ray players. However, Crackle is only available in the United States and Canada. Viewers in the U.S. can use any of these products, but Canadian users can only access Crackle via Google TV and the PS3.

While the movie offerings are obviously limited and HD playback isn’t available yet, I’m still interested in trying this out on my PlayStation 3. You can’t really beat free (I can live with a few advertisements), and it could prove to be useful on a rainy day when there’s just nothing on TV.

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Sony Corp., Rachel King

Rachel King is a staff writer for ZDNet based in San Francisco.

Disclosure

Rachel King

Rachel King has no business relationships, affiliations, investments, or other potential conflicts of interest relating to the content posted in this blog.

Biography

Rachel King

Rachel King is a staff writer for CBS Interactive in San Francisco. Before serving as a contributing editor at ZDNet in New York City for two years, she previously worked for The Business Insider, FastCompany.com, CNN's San Francisco bureau and the U.S. Department of State. Rachel has also written for MainStreet.com, Irish America Magazine and the New York Daily News, among others. Rachel has a B.A. in Mass Communications and History from the University of California, Berkeley and a M.S. in Journalism from Columbia University, where she served as art director for the student magazine, Plated.

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Crackle is not worth your time
raymond17 7th Dec
There is a 15 second ad every 9-11 minutes (It was the same Best Buy Christmas AD over and over). Then when it returns to the movie it has to buffer the movie, you wait about 10-20 seconds and it start playing the movie again, Over this past weekend, every 2 minutes or so, the movie stopped and you have to wait for the bufffer to fill up again, it will play for another 2 minutes and again you have to wait for 15 seconds or longer for the buffer to fill up. This went on for 2 nights and it happen if I was watching a movie or a TV program.

Unlike a TV program, the buffering happens at random times during the movie, in the middle of a fight, it freezes for 20 seconds.

I was using the Sony Bluray with a 4 GIG USB thumb drive plugged into the Bluray.
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RE: Sony's Crackle expands service to PS3 consoles, Bravia products and Roku
Aerowind 30th Mar 2011
So basically On-demand movies with commercials? I can live with that. They're going to need a better library if they want to get any users though.
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hi sorry to jump in here. i do like sound of crackle, its about time we sta
adrburt 30th Mar 2011
hi sorry to jump in here. i do like sound of crackle, its about time we started getting some thing for nothing, how ever i live in the uk and don't get this are there any plans in the pipeline of when it will come to the uk
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RE: Sony's Crackle expands service to PS3 consoles, Bravia products and Roku
k.kilian@... 30th Mar 2011
I've got Sony's streaming video box (primarily for Netflix) and I also get Crackle, it's a nice addition to supplement Netflix, but the catalog is limited. But at least I don't have to pay for it!
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RE: Sony's Crackle expands service to PS3 consoles, Bravia products and Roku
redryder508@... 30th Mar 2011
What no Wii? The content streamer that covers all of the big 3 game consoles will have a rather large installed base. And even with ad's should be successful.
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Why no Wii, you ask?
phoenix.psaltery@... 30th Mar 2011
@redryder508@... It's a Sony service. PS3s are made by Sony. Duh.
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Crackle is not worth your time
raymond17 7th Dec
There is a 15 second ad every 9-11 minutes (It was the same Best Buy Christmas AD over and over). Then when it returns to the movie it has to buffer the movie, you wait about 10-20 seconds and it start playing the movie again, Over this past weekend, every 2 minutes or so, the movie stopped and you have to wait for the bufffer to fill up again, it will play for another 2 minutes and again you have to wait for 15 seconds or longer for the buffer to fill up. This went on for 2 nights and it happen if I was watching a movie or a TV program.

Unlike a TV program, the buffering happens at random times during the movie, in the middle of a fight, it freezes for 20 seconds.

I was using the Sony Bluray with a 4 GIG USB thumb drive plugged into the Bluray.

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