ITV online comes to the PS3

UK TV NETWORK ITV will stick its on-demand ITV Player application onto the Playstation 3 before the end of this year.

The firm proudly announced its deal with the Japanese gaming giant Sony, which will see it add its on demand television services to the Blu-ray player that started out as a gaming console.

Perhaps reaffirming that view, ITV said that the addition of the service to the PS3 was part of its "wider strategy to roll out the highly successful ITV Player to platforms beyond itv.com - including games consoles and TV."

Shows on ITV Player will be free, but funded by ads which will come before, during and after them, just as it works on the television.

Scary news for PS3 users is the fact that they will be asked to download a software update to take advantage of the feature. PS3 software updates are pretty notorious for giving with one hand and taking with the other.

Fru Hazlitt, managing director of commercial and online at ITV interrupted our programme to add, "Our viewers want the option to watch their favourite content when and where they choose so distributing the ITV Player, with our rich content, to platforms beyond itv.com will allow us to meet that demand. We're really excited that they will soon be able to access the ITV Player on demand through the PS3 platform," at which point we changed the channel.

Nintendo Wii users have access to the BBC's Iplayer, but ITV nonetheless claimed that it was the first commercial network in the UK to piggyback its TV service on games consoles. µ