There's an App for That
The company made a breakout move at the end of 2009 when it launched mSpot Movies and began streaming content under its own brand. The service is able to stream to more than 50 different smartphones. As of this writing, the service is still in beta, but that should change by the time this issue is printed.
The mSpot team wasn't one of those specially selected by Apple for advance access to the iPad, so they found out about it like the rest of the world did-during Apple's announcement. The company already offered an iPhone app. Once the team got an iPad in their hands, says Daren Tsui, mSpot's CEO and co-founder, they realized the device's potential for video. They began creating their app at once.
One of the hardest things to get right was finding the optimal mix of quality and stream size. mSpot needed to deliver a stream that looked great on the iPad's large screen but that would still deliver smoothly over a 3G connection. After may blind tests with focus groups, mSpot decided to go with a 512Kbps stream with 24 frames per second.
"We really believe in this world where consumers are going to own multiple devices that could play back media. They're going to have a smartphone; they may have a pad or a slate device; they have a laptop; they have a work PC. Nowadays, there are all these set-top boxes that can support media as well. It's a world of multiple devices all being able to stream and [deliver] video. Imagine that to enjoy media, you have to sync to all these different devices. It's pretty daunting. Thus, we really feel like streaming with a cloud solution is the way of the future," says Tsui.
The app has been launched, but mSpot isn't resting: It's actively creating the service's next features. Tsui would like to add caching, so that even people without a decent connection can enjoy a movie. The service may even find its way to set-top boxes, although Tsui says that's a bit of a stretch since it would mean renegotiating contacts with movie studios. Don't be surprised if it happens, though, as mSpot seems eager to appear on every mobile device and to spread its service far and wide.
"Our mantra here is that we want to offer entertainment across a lot of different platforms. The iPad happens to be one of those," says Tsui.
ABC Player
When the iPad was announced, ABC's digital media team leaped into action, creating an app in 5 weeks so it would be ready when the device launched. The fact that they got it right from the start is a testament to the quick and thorough brainstorming that took place. What's surprising is that it's still the only network app for streaming current shows.
The iPad is ideal for television streaming, but television networks have been slow to embrace it. While nearly every broadcast and basic cable network streams video from its website, ABC is the only one (as of this writing) to create its own app. The nearest competitor is Hulu Plus, but that's hampered by a $9.99 monthly fee.
The team at ABC began creating their app as soon as Steve Jobs announced the iPad, and they did it without an actual iPad in hand, using only a software emulator.
Led by Albert Cheng, executive vice president for digital media at Disney-ABC Television, the team began by making a list of what viewers wanted, removing anything superfluous. They asked themselves how viewers would discover shows and what kind of playback experience people would embrace. In they end, they decided on a simple weekly schedule interface as being the most intuitive. The planning session took 2 hours and was deliberately kept short so that more time could be given to engineering.
Cheng's team already knew about adaptive bitrate streaming, thanks to the company's website streaming. But there was plenty that was new to them. For one thing, they had to learn the iPad SDK, which was constantly being changed by Apple right up until the iPad launched.
While the team considered offering website streaming that would play on the iPad, they abandoned the idea when they learned that HTML5 didn't support midroll ad insertion but could only do preroll. HTML5 might be great for short-form videos, Cheng says, but it's not ready for premium entertainment.
The ABC Player was an immediate hit. By the end of June, it had streamed more than 4.5 million episodes and had been downloaded more than 850,000 times. Cheng's team isn't quitting while they're ahead, though: They have some major improvements in store for the app-ones that will meet many users' requests. While Cheng won't say exactly what's coming, look for a new version around the time ABC's new fall shows debut.
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