Live TV on PS5 is Sony’s second attempt at putting linear television on a PlayStation, and this time nobody has to pay for it. The service has gone live in the US with more than 100 free, ad-supported channels spanning news, movies, TV shows, sports and anime — no extra subscription, no separate bill, just an icon on a console millions of people already own.
What is in the lineup
Content comes from Sony Pictures Television alongside partners including NBC and Fox News. Movies arrive via MovieSphere and FilmRise Free Movies, series include The Walking Dead, and anime is supplied by Crunchyroll — a useful reminder that Sony owns Crunchyroll outright and has an obvious incentive to funnel viewers toward it. Beyond the traditional categories there are gaming and esports channels, creator-led programming, documentaries, podcasts and other specialist strands. Sony says more channels and content will be added over time, but it has not published a schedule.
How to find it
Open the Media tab on the PS5 home screen and select the Live TV on PS5 icon. That placement is worth noting. Media has quietly become the second front of the PS5 interface, and dropping a 100-channel bundle there nudges the console toward being a default TV input rather than a device you switch away from once you stop gaming.
Why this is not PlayStation Vue again
Sony has been here before. PlayStation Vue was a paid live TV bundle that went up against YouTube TV and Sling, and Sony shut it down in 2019 after failing to make the numbers work. Vue’s problem was structural: it had to license expensive channel packages and then resell them at a margin against far larger competitors.
The new service inverts that model. Free ad-supported television, or FAST, does not require Sony to win a subscription war — it only needs enough watch time to sell advertising against. That puts Live TV on PS5 in the same category as Tubi, The Roku Channel and Sling Freestream, all of which have grown while paid skinny bundles stalled. It is a lower-risk bet, and a considerably more defensible one.
The bigger play: hardware as an ad platform
The strategic logic gets clearer when you look at where this is heading. Canada is next in line, and the service is scheduled to reach Bravia TVs later this year. Sony sells both the console and the television, which means it can build an advertising audience on hardware already installed in living rooms without paying anyone for distribution. Roku, Amazon and Samsung all made this move first; Sony arrives late, but with an unusually engaged install base and a content library it owns.
For PS5 owners the calculation is simple. A free tier of 100-plus channels is not a replacement for a full streaming stack, and ad loads on FAST services are typically heavier than on paid platforms. But as a zero-cost background layer — sports in the corner, an anime channel on autopilot, news while a 90GB download finishes — it removes one more reason to reach for a different remote. That is exactly the point.
Verdict
Live TV on PS5 is a smart, low-cost land grab rather than a headline feature. It costs owners nothing, it gives Sony a new advertising surface, and it quietly extends the amount of time the PS5 stays the active input on your TV. Expect the channel count to climb and the Bravia rollout to matter more than the console launch itself.
Source: TrustedReviews Sony is turning the PS5 into a TV streamer – without an extra subscription