Apply HN: Poor Man's Apple TV | Hacker News Reader

Apply HN: Poor Man's Apple TV

5 pointsdas_vicky4 comments

Another jab at cheesy taglines a) Build your own Roku/AppleTv b) Democratizing Video publishing / Video Publishing for the masses c) Buzzword loaded - (Hyperlocal) Video publishing Infrastructure as a service

What is this about? I am building a system which will allow you to convert your Android phone into a VOD streaming device and serve it to people within 100 mts range without Internet. A system, that will allow anyone to provide on-demand content without any data cost to the end user.

What's the purpose? Imagine you are a <Business> willing to provide on-demand content for <Media Type> to <Target Users>.

So you can be a) An Airport, Shopping Mall, Train station, Hotel serving Entertainment & Movies to Travelers b) A College serving Educational content to Students/Professors c) A Coffee chain who also wants to entertain customers with Videos d) TV-rejected channel serving channel content in Trains, Coffee shops etc..

Bonus Edge case e) An user using it as a Settop box to cast available content (based on their subscription) to their TV;

Extreme Edge cases f) Shops pushing formatted content like catalogs, offers g) NGOs/Government using this to push regional content for awareness, education etc.., in remote areas with limited internet connectivity

Replace <Business>, <Media Type>, <Target User> with anything. Combinations and possibilities are endless. Whoever you are, you can easily publish content to users at your desired locations.

How to make money? 3 most common ways 1) Charge monthly subscription to Businesses for using VooWIN-S, charge $x per GB of content stored etc. 2) Add in-roll advertisements to content for more money, share a part with businesses/content creators 3) Create a matte-black sleek box and sell that to businesses as the Local server.

I don't understand the primary use cases. I'm a train station, serving movies to travelers? I don't understand where your product comes in -- travelers can already get movies on the internet. I get that it doesn't use my mobile bandwidth, but I'm not usually very worried about that and that concern is decreasing very rapidly over time.

I'm a coffee chain who wants to entertain customers with videos? I've never heard of a coffee chain who wants this, but maybe I don't understand fully. Explain how your product creates value.

"I get that it doesn't use my mobile bandwidth, but I'm not usually very worried about that and that concern is decreasing very rapidly over time."

Unfortunately we (consumers in developing countries) cannot boast about same. Even while travelling, most of the time we do not even have internet connection. Even if we do, we cannot watch movies on mobile bandwidth without worrying about the aftermath on our pocket. Consuming videos over mobile bandwidth is actually suicide in most cases.

2nd point is that, watching videos in a buffering-free experience on mobile networks at affordable price is still a distant dream. That is the one of the reason Google advertised so much on Indian television about "Download youtube movies and watch without internet" - the entire of 2015. And if you know the whole saga of Facebook Free basics, you would realize that most people in India with smartphones don't have internet, because they cannot afford it.

Because the reality is that internet is limited in terms of availability and bandwidth, hence a proposed solution.

One more primary use case is watching videos in Flights. Most flights in India for example, do not have any sort of entertainment module. Even in limited international flights that I have been on like Emirates, the content on the Seat dashboards are limited, not frequently updated.

Coffee chain example might be horrible. But it can be seen as a value add for the coffee-chain. Small-time coffee-shops would be more appropriate. Other businesses can use Coffee-chains as base to set up these Entertainment hotspots.

Now about our proposed solution. Its a DIY kit, using which you can convert an existing phone into an "Entertainment hotspot" and serve people videos or any content - "without using up their data". Depending on the requirement, the "Entertainment hotspot" will sync/get data from our server to the "local Entertainment hub" and then to end user.

We are actually already working on building the entire business ourself, like providing Entertainment hotspots. But we thought if we make this kind of DIY kit available to all, people can use this Kit to come up with use cases we could not have imagined.

Frankly I don't even what people will come up with, in terms of use cases. But with my limited imagination, I think the following is possible

1) A small-time coffee-shop setup "Entertainment-hotspot" using his spare device and serve entertainment to his customers 2) High secret content streamed to group of viewers in the conf room. No uploading etc.. 3) Retail shops can use this to push Catalogs, Demo/promotional videos/content 4) Restaurants can use this for entertainment and pushing content like "Menus" etc..

Isn't this chromecast?

Assuming you are referring "Bonus Use case" that I mentioned, I would say it is Chromecast As A Service + Content, for your phone/tablet. That makes it more like Apple TV.

Or to put it another way, It is also a Chromecast, but with Content and without proprietory hardware.

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