RealNetworks is returning to its roots with RealPlayer...
RealNetworks is returning to its roots with RealPlayer Cloud and will spread the combo video player/cloud service from smartphones and tablets to smart TVs, Blu-ray players and set-top boxes, Rishi Mathew, vice president-product marketing, told us. RealPlayer Cloud, which launched…
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in late September as a 4 MB app, allows users to move, watch, save and share videos across any iOS, Android or Windows device. It has garnered equal interest among iOS and Android users, Mathew said. The service, which offers 2 GB of free storage and 25-, 100- and 300-GB-tier storage options available with a monthly fee, also has gained a surprising amount of attention from the 5 million Roku set-top owners largely because those users attach the service to a TV, he said. RealPlayer Cloud, which RealNetworks began developing 18 months ago, is based on the company’s SurePlayer technology that provides seamless auto-formatting of videos to fit the device type, screen size, available bandwidth and storage space available, Mathew said. Through the service, RealNetworks also hopes to jump-start its RealPlayer business, with 70-80 percent of RealPlayer engineers focused on the cloud service, while also continuing to update the standard video player, Mathew said. “The television is pretty important to us, because that’s where videos are enjoyed for the longest period of time.” RealNetworks also is working to bring the cloud service to Amazon’s Kindle “very, very soon,” Mathew said. RealPlayer Cloud’s not being on Kindle and in the Amazon Store from launch was a “time-to-market thing” and “we are working on getting that out,” Mathew said. With many consumers using tablets and smartphones to shoot 720p and 1080p video, research shows many RealPlayer Cloud customers will likely choose the 100-GB storage option after a “gestation period” during which they test out the service for free before choosing a premium tier, Mathew said. “We expect it to be a while before consumers figure out how much storage they will need, but we are seeing quite a few uploads on a daily basis both in the number and size of files and our servers are kept pretty busy at this early stage.” With RealPlayer Cloud, the focus is on video, Mathew said. With the return of founder Rob Glaser as interim CEO in 2012, RealNetworks was split into three business units, including RealPlayer, mobile entertainment and GameHouse, which has narrowed its focus to social casino games from a broader assortment of casual titles. “The focus of RealPlayer was and continues to be on videos, and the cloud is part of a continuum where in the past 18 months, we focused on getting more viral video in front of users, and now we are getting into their personal videos,” Mathew said. RealPlayer has 25 million users, about 80 percent of them based outside the U.S., Mathew said. While RealPlayer Cloud is initially limited to North America, RealNetworks is working on a version for international markets that will be available in the “coming months,” Mathew said.