Industry’s First Free App Framework for Apple TV Opens the tvOS Ecosystem to Video Content; Furthering the Company’s “JW Everywhere” Mission
NEW YORK – Feb. 18, 2016 – JW Player, a leading digital and mobile video platform and player company, today announces its Apple TV App Builder, a new open-source product within the JW platform. The Apple TV App Builder enables JW Player customers to develop a customized app for new Apple TV devices (fourth generation) with no coding, minimal configuration, and no additional cost. This solution is the industry’s first free app framework for Apple TV, and the newest addition to JW Player’s suite of video products.
Tasting Table, the award-winning digital epicurean media brand, is the first customer to leverage the Apple TV App Builder to develop a customized app. Tasting Table has a robust video inventory of more than 250 food and drink-focused videos, and produces 30 new videos per month for its 8MM+ member community. Tasting Table’s original video programming features cooking demos, chef interviews, recipe videos, and more.
Using JW Player’s solution, Tasting Table worked with JW Player to create a tvOS app ready for approval by Apple in under 24 hours. The company’s full content library debuted as a featured app in the Apple TV store.
“Video has always been a mainstay of our content strategy, but with the creation of our in-house Content Studio and our recent push this past November to produce even more video, we knew we wanted to get our new content to an even broader audience. JW Player was already helping us seamlessly stream video to our website, so when it came time to identify a technology provider to help us build an app for Apple TV, it was the natural choice,” says Rohit Gupta, Director of Product, TastingTable.com. “JW Player’s Apple TV App Builder allowed us to go from no tvOS presence to a fully-branded app ready for final approval by Apple overnight, with only minimal resources required from our in-house team.”
The Apple TV App Builder is available to all levels of JW Platform customers, including the free version. This makes it a significantly more affordable option than competitive offerings on the market. The solution works by automatically populating content from a customer’s JW Player Dashboard to push videos, titles, descriptions, and images directly to the customer’s Apple TV app playlist. The product allows for fully customizable design and branding, basic playback analytics reporting to the JW Player Dashboard, and playback of HLS video content from JW Platform and external URLs.
“Being ubiquitous in today’s media environment is a necessity for any content creator. Previous versions of Apple TV were an invitation-only development system for publishers and brands, but with the release of the new device and accompanying tvOS SDK, we were able to create a simple but beautiful product that enables publishers of any size or budget to get their content onto Apple TV,” says Jeroen Wijering, Co-Founder and Head of Product at JW Player. “Our mission is to enable our customers to publish their content on virtually any screen, and this product is the latest step towards that vision.”
This is JW Player’s first major new product offering following its $20M Series D funding. The Apple TV App Builder joins JW Player’s product suite, including JW Player 7, the world’s fastest video player, and the company’s mobile SDKs for iOS and Android. These products come together to power “JW Everywhere,” an initiative designed to allow customers to publish their content on virtually any screen within their strategic mix.
About Tasting Table
Tasting Table is the award-winning digital media company for savvy food and drink enthusiasts. TT tours the world of food and drink with the people who shape it—from chefs to mixologists, artisans to international tastemakers and beyond. TT’s daily mission is to inspire its smart, stylish community of 8+ million epicureans to live deliciously through expert editorial content, lush photography and original video programming across multiple platforms online and off. Visit www.tastingtable.com to join the conversation.