The Associated Press is now offering two apps that make 4K photos available on Samsung UHD connected TVs.
One app is offering breaking news, the other sports.
Previously Samsung and 1 Mainstream announced a partnership to launch content for its UHD sets that would simplify the process of putting content onto the devices.
AP is using the 1 Mainstream cloud-based digital TV distribution platform to make the photos available, reports Rajeev Raman, the CEO of 1 Mainstream.
While AP is only providing photos at the moment, other providers are expected to launch video apps on the Samsung 4K TVs in the upcoming weeks and months using the same platform.
Raman explains that the fragmentation of the connected TV landscape has discouraged companies from making content available on the TV because they must configure their apps for different over-the-top boxes like Roku and Apple TV as well as a host of different TV set manufacturers and models.
To help overcome that problem, 1 Mainstream has developed a platform that offers a simplified, automated system to publish apps and content to the devices.
As part of that process, 1 Mainstream first worked with Samsung to create the user experience and then put together templates that allow AP and others to quickly make their content available. “Our system performs all the ingest, content protection, etc. and sets the business rules in a completely automated fashion,” Raman says.
In a separate case, that allowed Sky News to quickly launch apps for Roku and Apple TV. “From our first conversations with them to the time they went live, it was only two and a half weeks,” Raman says.
BSkyB, which owns Sky News, bought a $2 million convertible debt security in 1 Mainstream last year, according to the Wall Street Journal.
“Our biggest customers tend to be pay TV operators,” Raman says. “Sky out of the U.K., Italy and Germany use the system for sports over-the-top offerings.”
