It looks Sony has decided to play catch up with the PlayStation 3, and offer a service that Xbox owners have been enjoying for a while now: online video distribution.
According to Dawn Chmielewski of the Los Angeles Times, Sony has been engaging in talks with Hollywood studios to negotiate online distribution of movies and television episodes. A spokesperson for Sony's PlayStation unit, Patrick Seybold, declined to comment on the rumors except to confirm that the initiative does exist, and that there will be information released on Tuesday of this week.
Though the online video sales market pales in comparison to the DVD market ($95 million for online sales in 2007, $23.4 billion for DVD rentals and sales), it is expected to be a fast growing market with $6.4 billion in revenue by 2010. If Sony wants to make sure to get a piece of that pie, they're going to have to act quickly, but they have a bad track record with this sort of distribution, and competition from just about every company you can think of.