Sony Drops Free Live TV on PS5 With 100 Plus Ad-Supported Channels Days Before Deleting 551 Paid Movies

Sony just turned the PS5 into a free cable box. Live TV on PS5 is rolling out today across the United States, accessible right from the Media tab on the console's home screen, and it ships with more than 100 live channels plus a growing pile of on-demand movies, shows, anime, sports and news. The whole thing is free. The whole thing is also ad-supported, courtesy of Sony Pictures Television, which means PS5 owners can now park on the couch, fire up the Media tab and let an algorithm feed them reruns of The Walking Dead, Naruto, Hell's Kitchen, a UFC prelim and an NBC News Now update without ever putting a disc in the drive. Whether that sounds like the future of your living room or a hostage situation with shorter ads, it is here, it is live, and it is not asking for your credit card.

What Is Actually Inside Live TV on PS5

The launch lineup reads like a leaked cable TV guide from a parallel timeline where cord cutting lost. Movies get MovieSphere by Lionsgate, 50 Cent Action, FilmRise Free Movies, Sony One Horror Hits and Cinevault, which covers action, horror and sci-fi at the price of sitting through the same six ad breaks per hour that ruined regular cable. TV shows pull in Community, The Shield, Hell's Kitchen, The Walking Dead, Forensic Files, Unsolved Mysteries, Deal or No Deal USA, Fear Factor and Ice Road Truckers from A+E's HISTORY. Anime fans get Naruto, Sailor Moon, Hunter x Hunter, Death Note, plus exclusive Black Clover and Crunchyroll Box Sets channels. Sports runs through FOX Sports, NASCAR, NBC Sports Now and UFC with MMA, football, hockey, motorsports, golf, boxing and soccer mixed in. News and weather covers NBC News Now, Fox Weather and LiveNOW from FOX. There is also a creator and specialty lane with Hot Ones, The Ringer, Futcrunch, Idle Mode, eCLUTCH and assorted gaming and esports content. Grace Chen, Vice President of Network Advertising, Loyalty and Licensed Merchandise at Sony Interactive Entertainment, signed the post and positioned it as just another easy way to discover entertainment on the console.

How You Actually Turn It On

There is no extra download, no second PSN account and no subscription. From the PS5 home screen, head into the Media tab, hit the Live TV on PS5 icon, then sign in with your regular PlayStation account and start watching. Programming availability will vary by local TV market and the lineup will refresh over time as Sony Pictures Television swaps channels in and out, but the entry point is already live for every U.S. PS5 owner. Sony also confirmed Canada is next on the roadmap and additional regions are under consideration, which means anyone hoping Live TV would quietly stay in one country is going to be disappointed.

The 551 Movie Problem Nobody at Sony Wants to Mention

Here is the part that is going to stick in people's throats. Live TV on PS5 is rolling out just days before Sony permanently removes 551 previously purchased Studio Canal movies from users' libraries on September 1, 2026, with no refunds. Tom's Hardware reported the purge covers iconic titles like Terminator 2, Apocalypse Now and Mulholland Drive, all bought through the PlayStation Store at full price by people who reasonably believed digital purchases meant permanent access. The official PlayStation Store email that went out to affected accounts is blunt: due to content licensing arrangements, the content will be removed from your video library, thank you, PlayStation Store, Play Has No Limits. Putting that line next to a free, ad-supported FAST hub is a flex that even Sony's PR team probably wishes they could redact.

How Players Are Reacting on Day One

Reaction has been mixed, which is putting it nicely. IGN, Engadget, PrimeTopNews and a stack of creator accounts have written up the launch with the usual list-of-partners framing, and the official @PlayStation tweet announcing the feature pulled more than a million likes and over a million reposts in a few hours. Players in the replies are split between people happy to get free TV on a console they already paid $500 for and people pointing out, with screenshots, that Sony is removing content from those same libraries on September 1 while selling ads on top of replacements. The Spanish site chapuzasinformatico captured the contradiction in one line: PlayStation launches free TV with ads just as it removes 551 movies purchased by its users. That line is doing a lot of work on the timeline right now and Sony has not offered a refund path for any of the affected movies.

Critical Pixel Take

Live TV on PS5, judged purely as a software feature, is fine. It is free, it does not require any new hardware, it is buried behind a Media tab instead of shoved into the gaming UI, and it gives a PS5 owner with no cable subscription a usable default when they just want background noise. The channel mix is broad, the partner list is genuinely impressive and Crunchyroll alone justifies the app for a lot of anime households. The problem is the company shipping it. Sony is asking players to celebrate an ad-supported free product on the same console where it is deleting hundreds of paid movies it sold as purchases. You cannot ask consumers to be excited about rented content while you are actively taking away content they bought. Play Has No Limits, except the limit is the license term and the term just ended for 551 films. If you are a PS5 owner in the U.S., the Live TV app is now sitting in your Media tab and the Studio Canal removal clock starts ticking at midnight local time on September 1. Try not to think about both at the same time.