GigaOM » TV apps

OTT technologies and strategies for broadcasters

tvstrategies — Wed, 14 Nov 2012 07:55:37 +0000

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Development strategies for the app-developer community

Thu, 27 Sep 2012 06:55:21 +0000

App developers are the cornerstones of the multibillion-dollar app market, supplying the talent behind the creation of the millions of apps on the market today. However, the developer community — composed mainly of individuals or very small companies — remains largely unknown and often underrepresented in the app market. And many developers view apps as projects rather than products, making monetization difficult. Given these challenges, those organizations and companies that can bring tools, resources, and a collective voice to this group will be an important factor in the evolution of mobile-app development.

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Takeaways from connected consumer’s second quarter

Thu, 19 Jul 2012 06:55:44 +0000

Tablets featured prominently in the connected consumer space during the second quarter of 2012, both as a product category in their own right and as a component of broader platform strategies by the major OS providers. Meanwhile Apple added AirPlay streaming to Mac OS, and Microsoft made an aggressive bid to dominate the second screen by introducing SmartGlass apps. The period also saw important moves by Facebook to broaden its monetization strategy and an investigation by federal antitrust authorities into pay-TV licensing practices and their impact on the emerging online-video business. This quarterly wrap-up discusses these developments as well as offers trends and topics to watch in the second half of 2012 and beyond.

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Attention app developers: Take our survey!

Michael Wolf — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 17:25:40 +0000

TV Apps

Do you develop smartphone, tablet or TV apps? If so, we’d love to hear from you. GigaOM is working with the Application Developer’s Alliance to conduct a survey of application developers of all types, and we’d like to hear more about what you’re working on, what screens and platforms you develop for, how you monetize your work, as well as what categories of apps. The results will be featured in a report written by GigaOM Pro and offered to members of the Application Developer’s Alliance.

If you our survey, we’ll return the favor by sending you some of the topline results via email, as well as entering you in a drawing to win one of the $50 Amazon gift cards we will be giving away.

So what are you waiting for? Take our survey and help us better understand you and the broader app developer markeplace.

Photo courtesy of Wired Photostream/Creative Commons.

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Who and what to watch in the new era of the living room

Thu, 31 May 2012 06:55:44 +0000

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Flingo raises $7m to make your TV smarter

Ryan Lawler — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 15:00:00 +0000

Flingo has raised $7 million in a Series A funding round led by August Capital. The San Francisco-based startup, which integrates streaming video and interactive advertising into smart TVs, has also added two new board members: August Capital’s David Marquart, as well as Howard Hartenbaum, founding investor in Skype.

Flingo’s software is embedded on 7.8 million Smart TVs and other devices from manufacturers including Samsung, LG, Vizio, Sanyo, Insignia, Western Digital and Netgear. Its technology can be used for building apps that bring streaming Internet video to the TV, while also providing automatic content recognition that knows what program is playing when a viewer is watching live TV.

With that content recognition in place, Flingo can enable broadcasters to build second-screen applications that can send relevant content to a viewer’s TV, laptop, tablet or smartphone. It can also enable on-screen apps so viewers can share what they’re watching with friends and followers on social networks like Facebook and Twitter.

The company has been bootstrapped since being founded in 2008, but co-founder and CEO Ashwin Navin told me in a phone interview that Flingo had reached a point where it needed additional capital to invest in infrastructure, personnel and for international expansion.

On the infrastructure front, Flingo fingerprints live TV as part of its automatic content recognition scheme, and wants to drastically ramp up the number of channels it indexes. Navin said he wants to be able to fingerprint thousands of channels simultaneously, which will require a fair amount of new infrastructure.

Part of the reason it’s looking to do thousands of channels is that it sees a large international opportunity. Flingo technology today is embedded on devices in 118 countries worldwide. The hope is that it will be able to leverage that footprint by striking deals in more countries. To that end, Navin is spending the next few weeks in Asia, looking to make key hires to expand the startup’s presence there.

Finally, there’s the possibility of some expansion through acquisition. Navin noted that there’s a large amount of talent in the social TV space, and that market segment in particular could see a shakeout soon. “I want to be able to acquire talent and teams” if that happens, he said.

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Cox is latest to bring live TV to the iPad

Ryan Lawler — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 21:14:03 +0000

Cox Communications is making live TV available on the iPad, with the release of a new app that lets subscribers watch shows and movies while in their homes. The Cox TV Connect app makes it the latest in a series of pay TV operators to extend their services to new devices.

Previously, operators like Cablevision and Time Warner Cable have launched iPad apps that bring live TV to the tablet, as long as users are logged in and are connecting from their home networks. Other apps — like one from Comcast — let users authenticate an watch on demand content. Cox is taking the former approach with its app, bringing live TV to the app in user homes.

For cable operators like Cox, the end goal is to make as much content available on as many places as possible. Thanks to the availability of streaming video on new mobile and connected devices, consumers are increasingly demanding access to their favorite TV shows and networks regardless of the devices. “A screen is a screen is a screen,” Cox VP of Video Strategy Steve Necessary told us in a phone interview.

While the Cox app is a step in the right direction, the selection of live channels in somewhat limited today: The app has about 35 channels available for live viewing, out of hundreds of channels available to subscribers. Compare that, for instance, with Cablevision, which introduced its iPad app with all of its channels available at launch.

Necessary said that’s because the company needs to negotiate rights with TV networks before putting them online. Cox also needs to ensure that local broadcast content, or content that is subject to certain blackouts, doesn’t appear in the app. Cox has operations in 18 different states throughout the country, so local content can vary by market.

This isn’t the first app for Cox; it previously launched an application that lets users browse content and program their DVR from mobile devices. Necessary said that at some point the functionality from both apps will likely be blended together into a single application that handles both sets of functionality.

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5 apps for finding your favorite TV shows

Ryan Lawler — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 17:00:35 +0000

More than 60 percent of viewers watch TV with a computer in their laps or a mobile device in their hands. So why not use those devices to figure out what to watch next? A growing number of apps are being built to provide recommendations for users trying to figure out what to watch on TV and on their mobile devices. Here are five of our favorites:

BuddyTV

BuddyTV got its start by building a TV news and community site, but has expanded to create mobile apps built for personalized recommendations of TV shows. By taking into account which shows viewers have checked into, as well as those they’ve rated, BuddyTV can suggest new TV shows that are airing whenever they open the app. And since it tracks viewership, it will surface shows users already have shown an affinity for when those shows are on air.

Dijit

Dijit’s mobile app was launched primarily to be used as a remote control for a wide range of devices. Paired with the Griffin Beacon IR controller, Dijit can be used to control anything from your TV to your Blu-ray player to your Roku streaming media box. But in addition to the channel grid, which can be used to search and navigate what’s on TV at any given time, Dijit has added a social layer on top, allowing viewers to check in and comment on their favorite shows. It also provides social recommendations based on Facebook integration, suggesting new shows for users to watch.

Fanhattan

While it’s not necessarily used to find or watch shows on the TV, the Fanhattan app provides a way to search for content within applications from services like Netflix and Hulu Plus on a user’s iPad or iPhone. With a universal search functionality, users can search TV shows and movies without having to jump in and out of different apps for the information they want. It also provides a wealth of cast and crew data, ratings and multimedia assets related to the content users are searching for.

Fav.tv

While most people are looking for the best content available when they turn on the TV, some want to know when their favorite shows air. Enter Fav.tv. The startup’s iOS and Android apps offer the ability to keep track of when new episodes are airing and mark off episodes they have already watched. The app also provides news about shows from around the web, as well as the ability to share comments about shows with their friends within the app.

Yap.tv

Yap.tv has taken a decidedly social approach to aggregating TV listings, showing its users which shows are most popular, while also letting them set favorites and see what friends are watching. Its guide is also a lot more visual than most other TV apps, highlighting cover art for each of the shows represented. Once viewers choose a show, they can take polls, see tweets from other viewers and participate in live chats as well.

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First look: Spotify is coming to Roku

Janko Roettgers — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 23:00:08 +0000

Roku users will soon be able to access their Spotify playlists on the device: A dedicated Spotify channel for Roku is apparently close to being launched, I’ve been told by a source familiar with both companies’ plans.

The launch could happen as soon as next month, with mid-January 2012 being mentioned as another possibility. I’ve heard that the channel is basically ready to go, with the only hold-up being contractual negotiations between Roku and Spotify.

One should note that I haven’t been able to confirm these plans with either company. Spotify didn’t reply in time when asked about the app, and a Roku spokesperson told me that the company doesn’t comment on “rumors and potential partners.”

However, I do have two early-development screen shots of Spotify on Roku’s user interface:

Spotify has been working on bringing its platform into the living room and recently rolled out an app for the WD TV platform as well as Boxee’s. There has been a lot of demand for bringing Spotify to Roku as well, which means that a Spotify channel on the device could make many Roku owners very happy.

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SyncTV: building TV apps for almost every device

Ryan Lawler — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 15:15:07 +0000

When it comes to building connected-TV apps, most video providers are stuck trying to decide which devices to build for: After all, it seems like every consumer electronics manufacturer has its own software development kit (SDK) to do so. There are more than a dozen different frameworks for creating applications that run on different connected TVs, Blu-ray players, game consoles, streaming set-top boxes, tablets, mobile handsets and the like, which is more than most publishers can reasonably be expected to develop for.

Enter SyncTV, which aims to deliver third-party video applications for multiple platforms without going through the process of reinventing the wheel each time a publisher wants to reach a new device. The company delivers video experiences to the PC and Mac, as well as mobile frameworks like Android and iOS. But the real key is in reaching TV screens, with apps built for connected TVs and Blu-ray players.

SyncTV builds apps for connected TVs and other devices from a wide range of major CE manufacturers, such as Sony, Samsung, LG, Vizio, Philips and Panasonic. Its apps are also available on Roku and Boxee Box streaming devices, and it’s also working on applications for the upcoming launch of Microsoft’s new Xbox Live user interface.

Being available on such a wide range of devices is becoming increasingly important for video publishers. When you think about Netflix, for instance, one of that company’s main advantages over competitors has been its relative ubiquity on connected devices. However, that ubiquity comes with a price: Netflix CEO Reed Hastings has admitted to paying an “innovation tax” for being in all of those places. But not everyone has the resources that Netflix does, which are necessary to build all those apps.

With SyncTV, however, video publishers don’t necessarily need to create apps for every device. Because it’s already built the user interface and has the back end necessary for ingest, encoding, digital rights management, ad insertion, reporting and billing, it can simplify the process of rolling out to new devices. It can also reuse a lot of the same code and infrastructure.

For video publishers, that reduces a ton of complexity associated with being everywhere that consumers want them to be. There are already a number of publishers taking advantage of that offer: SyncTV’s named clients include NBC Universal in the UK, French broadcaster M6, U.S.-based VOD provider Avail-TVN, German TV station Wider.TV and South Asian content provider Bollywood Nirvana.

SyncTV is being spun out of DRM provider Intertrust, and it is going independent. The company, which currently has more than 30 employees, is based in Sunnyvale, Calif., and also has offices in France, Spain, the UK, the Netherlands, Japan, Singapore, South Korea and China.

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