MSN is a web portal and related collection of Internet services and apps for Windows and mobile devices, provided by Microsoft and launched on August 24, 1995, alongside the release of Windows 95.
Amazon Prime Video, or simply Prime Video, is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming and rental service of Amazon offered as a standalone service or as part of Amazon's Prime subscription. The service primarily distributes films and television series produced by Amazon MGM Studios or licensed to Amazon, as Amazon Originals, with the service also hosting content from other providers, content add-ons, live sporting events, and video rental and purchasing services.
Apple TV is a digital media player and microconsole developed and marketed by Apple Inc. It is a small network appliance hardware that sends received media data such as video and audio to a television set or external display. Its media services include streaming media, TV Everywhere-based services, local media sources, and sports journalism and broadcasts.
Flixster was an American social-networking movie website for discovering new movies, learning about movies, and meeting others with similar tastes in movies, currently owned by parent company Fandango. The formerly independent site, allows users to view movie trailers as well as learn about new and upcoming movies at the box office. It was originally based in San Francisco, California and was founded by Joe Greenstein and Saran Chari on January 20, 2006. It was also the former parent company of Rotten Tomatoes from January 2010 to February 17, 2016. On February 17, 2016, Flixster, including Rotten Tomatoes, was acquired by Fandango.
Plex Inc. is an American software company that develops its namesake streaming media service and a client–server media player platform. Plex's media server software organizes video, audio, and photos from a user's server and streams it to player applications on mobile devices, smart TVs, streaming boxes, and in web apps. In 2019, Plex launched an ad-supported streaming service of movies, television shows and music that is accessible from its applications. Plex Inc. is based in Los Gatos, California.
ITVX is a British ad-supported video-on-demand streaming service operated by ITV that launched on 5 December 2008, it predominantly offers content from the broadcaster, as well as some exclusive and licensed content. The service was known as ITV Player from its inception until 2015. On 23 November 2015, ITV gave the app and its website (ITV.com) a revamp, and the service was renamed to ITV Hub. As of August 2021, the service has at least 30 million registered users.
Voddler was a Stockholm, Sweden-based provider of a video-on-demand (VOD) platform and a streaming technology for over-the-top (OTT) streaming on the public Internet. In Scandinavia, Voddler was primarily known for the commercial VOD-service Voddler, which was launched in 2009. As a company, Voddler was founded in 2005 and developed its own streaming solution, called Vnet. Vnet is based on peer-to-peer (p2p), where all users contribute by streaming movies to each other, but, unlike traditional p2p, Vnet has a central administrator who decides which users that have access to which movies. Due to this exception, Vnet has been referred to as a "hybrid p2p distribution system", "walled garden p2p" or "controlled p2p". In addition to running the consumer service Voddler, the company Voddler also offers, since 2013, Vnet as a stand-alone technology for other streaming platforms. The service Bollyvod, a global VOD-service for Bollywood-content that Voddler built for the Indian movie industry, was released as a pilot in 2014.
Google TV was a smart TV operating system from Google co-developed by Intel, Sony and Logitech. It launched in October 2010 with official devices initially made by Sony and Logitech. Google TV integrated the Android 3.0/3.2 operating system and the Google Chrome web browser to create an interactive television overlay on top of existing online video sites to add a 10-foot user interface, for a smart TV experience.
UltraViolet was a cloud-based digital rights locker for films and television programs that allowed consumers to store proofs-of-purchase of licensed content in an account to enable playback on different devices using multiple applications from several different streaming services. UltraViolet also allowed users to share access to their library with up to five additional people. UltraViolet was deployed by the Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem (DECE), an alliance of 85 companies that included film studios, retailers, consumer electronics manufacturers, cable television companies, internet service providers (ISPs), internet hosting vendors, and other systems and security vendors, with the notable exceptions of Walt Disney Studios, Google, Amazon and Apple.
A smart TV, also known as a connected TV (CTV), is a traditional television set with integrated Internet and interactive Web 2.0 features, which allows users to stream music and videos, browse the internet, and view photos. Smart TVs are a technological convergence of computers, televisions, and digital media players. Besides the traditional functions of television sets provided through traditional broadcasting media, these devices can provide access to over-the-top media services such as streaming television and internet radio, along with home networking access.
An over-the-top (OTT) media service is a media service offered directly to viewers via the Internet. OTT bypasses cable, broadcast, and satellite television platforms—the types of companies that have traditionally acted as controllers or distributors of such content. It has also been used to describe no-carrier cellphones, for which all communications are charged as data, avoiding monopolistic competition, or apps for phones that transmit data in this manner, including both those that replace other call methods and those that update software.
Microsoft mobile services are a set of proprietary mobile services created specifically for mobile devices, they are typically offered through mobile applications and mobile browser for Windows Phone platforms, BREW, and Java. Microsoft's mobile services are typically connected with a Microsoft account and often come preinstalled on Microsoft's own mobile operating systems while they are offered via various means for other platforms. Microsoft started to develop for mobile computing platforms with the launch of Windows CE in 1996 and later added Microsoft's Pocket Office suite to their Handheld PC line of PDAs in April 2000. From December 2014 to June 2015, Microsoft made a number of corporate acquisitions, buying several of the top applications listed in Google Play and the App Store including Acompli, Sunrise Calendar, Datazen, Wunderlist, Echo Notification Lockscreen, and MileIQ.
Ameba is an independent, subscription-based streaming video (IPTV) service that hosts educational TV shows, children's cartoons, and music videos via the web, mobile, tablet, smart TVs, gaming consoles, and connected smart devices. The privately funded company was founded in 2007 and is headquartered in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. Ameba is currently available throughout the U.S. and Canada for free through AVOD and SVOD (subscription). On March 21, 2019, Ameba became the first CAVCO accredited independent children's streaming service allowing content producers to meet the "shown in Canada" requirement for the Canadian Film or Video Production Tax Credit (CPTC) program.
Chromecast is a line of digital media players developed by Google. The devices, designed as small dongles, can play Internet-streamed audio-visual content on a high-definition television or home audio system. The user can control playback with a mobile device or personal computer through mobile and web apps that support the Google Cast protocol, or by issuing commands via Google Assistant; later models introduced an interactive user interface and remote control. Content can be mirrored to video models from the Google Chrome web browser on a personal computer or from the screen of some Android devices.
Qello Holdings is an American-based entertainment company founded in 2010, in New York, by Brian Lisi, Bob Frank, and Richard Johnson. Qello is the parent company of digital streaming service Qello Concerts, and over-the-top content service provider Qello Media Solutions. Qello Concerts is a digital streaming music service specializing in on-demand concert films and music documentaries. In 2016, Qello Concerts added live streaming events and original programming. The company is headquartered in New York City.
Android TV is a smart TV operating system based on Android and developed by Google for television sets, digital media players, set-top boxes, and soundbars. A successor to Google TV, it features a user interface designed around content discovery and voice search, content aggregation from various media apps and services, and integration with other recent Google technologies such as Assistant, Cast, and Knowledge Graph.
The Nexus Player was a digital media player co-developed by Google, Intel and Asus. It was the second media player in the Google Nexus family of consumer devices. Originally running the Android 5.0 ("Lollipop") operating system, it was the first device to employ the Android TV platform. The Nexus player supports Google Cast, the feature for selecting and controlling media playback on a television that was first introduced by Chromecast. Sales of the Nexus Player were discontinued in May 2016, and product support ended in March 2018.
Google TV is an online transactional video on demand (TVOD) service operated by Google. Announced in September 2020, as a service it allows users to search and discover video titles available across multiple different streaming services as well as to rent or to buy available titles from Google and add any selected title to a watchlist for watching or accessing such titles from eligible devices and platforms. The buy, rent or preorder options were also part of Google Play Movies & TV, another service by Google which later was moved to Google TV service.
The Apple TV app is a line of media player software programs developed by Apple Inc. for viewing television shows and films delivered by Apple to consumer electronic devices. It can stream content from the iTunes Store, the Apple TV Channels a la carte video on demand service, and the Apple TV+ original content subscription service. On iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, and Apple TV devices it can also index and access content from linked apps of other video on demand services.
