pult – simple fuss free internet tv

Posted: March 1, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Tech | Tags: , , , | 7 Comments

I rarely get excited about technology these days, in fact I can’t remember the last service that launched which made me say “wow”, but Pult has done just that.

Coming out the recent Seedcamp and based in Tallinn, Estonia, the team at Pult, have created a really simple way to display video on an internet connected screen and then control it using a smart phone all without the need to install any software.  At the moment the content available is somewhat limited, but it’s not the content itself that that really interests me here, its the concept and the fact that this is all done in the browser, with no apps to install and no need for devices to support protocols like Apple Airplay or DNLA.

How It Works

Navigate to the pult.io website in the browser of your large screen (internet connected TV, PC, iMac etc) and you will be presented with a 4 character code

Pult setup process

Pult setup process

Now navigate to pult.io on your smartphone and you are presented with a different screen that allows you input the 4 characters shown on your large screen, via the connect button at the bottom.

Pult mobile device web app

Pult mobile device web app

And that’s it…. your phone is now connected through the magic of the internet to your large screen. So you can chose to display anything from the options presented. It’s just using websockets behind the scenes which in laymans terms means your large screen maintains an open connection to the Pult  servers, so when you tell your phone what to play it tells the Pult server and they tell your large screen.

Here’s a rather dull, sorry, video here demonstrating how it works:

And Now The Interactive Part

The code showing for my laptop right now is GDPC, as shown above, which means you should be able to play something on my screen using your phones. I’ll keep it open for most of today (1st March 2012) unless I get sick of being Rick Rolled

UPDATE – My code is actually now AEQT as I closed my browser.

Rubber Dinghy Rapids

Posted: January 19, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Tech | Tags: , , , , | 1 Comment

I’m probably amongst the minority of my peers on this but for some time I’ve questioned the actions of those of my friends who regularly risk the potential legal ramifications of torrenting 1000’s of videos and albums every year and who have fallen foul to a plethora of viruses and Trojans from bogus downloads. I’ve not been a fan of pirating since my days at university when Napster was all new and the talk of the web and even less so since I took up camp at the 7digital offices where piracy is obviously one of our biggest competitors alongside messrs Jobs and Bezos. I certainly don’t advocate the theft of copyrighted material, it puts my job at risk, but after this weekend I’ve begun to understand why it happens.

After being reminded that I still hadn’t seen the Chris Morris film Four Lions I went to 3 HMV stores on Saturday but was unable to find it in any of them. I could have ordered it from Amazon but it would have arrived mid week and I probably wouldn’t have gotten around to watching it for weeks. I wanted to watch it that night. It wasn’t available on Zune or SkyPlayer on the XBox so I had a look round a few sites online but nowhere would allow me to buy it and then stream it to my TV through the Xbox 360 due to the DRM or requirement to use proprietary software. So I chose to torrent it.

The movie downloaded in around 20mins and the torrent client I chose, Vuze, has a DNLA client to allow me to stream it directly to my Xbox with no intervention – it even automatically converts it into the right format if necessary. The endless choice, ease and speed of the process makes it so effortless – if I could have that same service and pay for it I definitely would.

With the number of connected devices in the average household increasing and the advent of connected TV sets we need better licensed services in the UK that are simple for the average non technical person to use and made available on these platforms. I’m pleased to see Sky and Lovefilm have already taken a step into console integration with their movie services on XBox 360 and PS3 respectfully. There’s iTunes too, but you need an Apple TV device to play through your TV.   Outside of movies there are several good services (iPlayer, Seesaw and Skyplayer) but again they are only usable through a web browser. These existing services also need to look to make their content available through more platforms like Boxee and Roku so that they are simple plug and play services.

DISCLAIMER: I am actually now going to buy Four Lions from Amazon, it would have been better to be able to pay the studio, Optimum Releasing, directly with some form of honesty box system though.

Oh and the title of this blog post is taken from a quote in the movie and for those of you that haven’t seen it yet, I highly recommend that you watch it, it’s laugh out loud funny all the way through.