Apple has discontinued its TV app in Sony’s PlayStation Store so that it is available on the PS4 and PS5 game consoles – also in Germany. The manufacturer is thus expanding the availability of its video offer in the living room.

In addition to the in-house devices, TV is now also available on newer smart TVs from LG , Sony and Samsung available as well as on Amazon’s Fire TV hardware and now also on the two large game consoles Xbox and PlayStation.

Streaming and video-on-demand The TV app gives access to Apple’s video-on-demand offer, once known as the “iTunes Store”. Users can access films and TV series that have already been purchased as well as buy or rent new content, the offer is partly in 4K and HDR.

Part of Apple TV is also Apple’s one-year video streaming service TV +, which relies solely on exclusive content and costs 5 euros per month as a subscription. In addition, you can subscribe to additional “channels”, paid streaming additional offers from certain television stations such as the US pay-TV channel Starz, in Germany the selection of channels is so far very small.

The integration of streaming apps from other manufacturers, such as those on the iPhone, iPad and Apple’s own TV box, is missing on the PlayStation as well as on other third-party hardware; existing customers run on the TV app can log into the TV app on the PlayStation using a QR code, new customers must create an Apple ID, which is also used to settle payments directly to Apple.

Wide availability The TV app, which was once limited to Apple hardware, has now arrived on numerous platforms and is slowly approaching the streaming offers of the competition in terms of availability – from Netflix to Disney + to Prime Video. The company has not yet announced a Windows or Android app, but browser access to TV + is possible – with limited functionality.

(lbe)