SyncTV on the iPhone?
March 6, 2008
Like many people we were waiting to see what Apple had to say about the SDK for the iPhone/iPod Touch. And so far it looks… very promising.
It does seem that Apple is serious about helping developers; that they want to build a real development platform. We are already downloading the SDK to see if we can create a SyncTV player for the iPhone/iPod Touch.
We will know a lot more soon, based on what we find, but the potential for a SyncTV player to work on the iPhone is now at least somewhat realistic, and very exciting. It means that consumers could get ad-funded, subscription and premium downloads from SyncTV in the not-too-distant future.
As we see it, this is all a very good move by Apple. I just really hope that the reality of the SDK bears out the hype.
John
No User Left Behind
January 28, 2008
With the latest version of the SyncTV client, the Mac, Windows and Linux versions are now equally solid.
I use a Mac, and I know the frustration of not having the application you want on the platform you want. Supporting playback on all three major desktop platforms is not a trivial task, but we hope people will appreciate this approach.
Very early on in our development, we made a decision to use the GTK+ and GStreamer open source components for the SyncTV player. This allowed us to leverage a very stable and robust framework across operating systems. It’s really not a stretch to use open source components to build a software player for an open standards-based content service.
We could have used the native OS-level APIs to develop each version of the player, but that would have likely tripled our effort required to develop and test for each platform. Or we could have used a virtual machine technology such as Java to do it, but we would have likely sacrificed performance at some level.
Our approach with the development of the SyncTV player echoes our commitment to open-standards, as it is the first SyncTV ‘device’ to be certified to adhere to the open web APIs of the SyncTV service. Building a scalable and user-friendly ecosystem for broadband entertainment is a marathon race, not a sprint. We are working hard to build the right service for the consumer, and we think our latest SyncTV player release for Mac, Windows and Linux is a step in that direction.
John
SyncTV @ CES
January 7, 2008
We’re here in Las Vegas, for SyncTV’s first-ever CES show. It’s a great time to see what’s coming down the pipeline, and it’s no different for SyncTV. At this year’s CES this year we are doing private demonstrations of a device that will play downloads from the SyncTV TV download service (including 1080p HD video content) on a television set.
The device is a proof-of-concept, which we are showing to third-party manufacturers at CES to help them on their way to develop SyncTV compatible devices. Because SyncTV was designed to work directly on Consumer Electronics devices, in the future we expect SyncTV to be available on TV sets, in-car video systems, set-top-boxes, DVD players, and portable media players.
As a company, we are committed to open standards for all of our communication protocols and data formats, which makes it easier for developers to create devices to support the service. And as more compatible devices are created, people will see the benefits of the flexible playback that we baked in to the service.
There’s a press release with a little more information here: http://synctv.com/about/press_kit
If you’re interested in finding out about which protocols and data formats we use, check them out here: http://synctv.com/standards
We’re going to get back to the madness which is CES, but if you’re at the show, feel free to stop by and say hi. We’re at the Pioneer Electronics booth, number 9827 in the Central Hall.
John Gildred
