General

MyTVPal

It's not ready for release, but this video provider could succeed even as others get all the press. Unlike the others, this one claims it plans to work closely with ISPs.

by Gerry Blackwell [September 21, 2007]

Joost, the Internet-based peer-to-peer video on demand service from the guys who invented Skype and Kazaa, is getting all the ink, but MyTVPal, an under-the-radar outfit from San Francisco, deserves some attention too. The company can deliver high-definition (HD) content over a broadband internet connection and, perhaps more importantly, it's anxious to work with ISPs.

"MyTVPal was founded by a group of private investors," explains chief operating officer Robert Liu. "The main goal was to establish a streaming video service that could stream high-definition content. That's our main differentiator. We want to offer something a little different from movie download sites like Movielink."

It's a laudable goal, but MyTVPal isn't there yet.

The startup point
The company is currently offering about 10,000 hours of mostly low-value content—trailers, straight-to-video movies, old TV—for free. It has attracted, Liu says, just under 100,000 users, but whether this is regular users, simultaneous viewers during peak periods, or the total number who have downloaded the MyTVPal client software is not clear.

Liu at one point refers to this service as "the final beta." He also talks about an official, commercial launch within the next three months "or maybe sooner." But at another point, he characterizes the company's current activity as "research and development." It's clear much has yet to be worked out, most of it on the business and content fronts.

The technology MyTVPal will use to deliver the streaming content, including in HD quality, is solid and proven, he says. It's from MatrixStream Technologies Inc., which we wrote about last year. MyTVPal is using MatrixStream's IMX X1v Solid State XMS Streaming Servers, each of which can support about 100,000 users.

It will also, eventually, offer viewers the option to buy or rent a MatrixStream set top box (STB), which will deliver MyTVPal content to an HDTV. (The only option currently is to download the PC client software and view on a computer screen.) Liu is evasive about when the company will offer STBs.

"We're evaluating the business issues," he says. "The technology works great, though. Even if you're on a standard 1.5 Mbps DSL service, it will deliver DVD-quality video, no problems. And I'm not talking about streaming to a tiny PC screen, but to a 50-inch TV."

The technology
With the MatrixStream technology, it takes about 500 Kbps of bandwidth to the home to deliver "broadcast-quality" video, 750 Kbps for DVD quality, 1.5 Mbps for 720p HD and a minimum of 2.5 Mbps for 1080p HD.

In my tests, the 720p HD streams, which are obviously highly compressed, did indeed look like HD, or near to it. That said, on a 20-inch 1280x1024 monitor, they display in a window about two-thirds the size of the screen, so quality is a little difficult to assess.

Liu won't say how much his company is paying for the MatrixStream servers, or how much in total it has invested so far. But technology, he says, will not be the major expenditure. Marketing to acquire customers will be much more cost intensive. So far it's all been word of mouth.

"The MatrixStream equipment is very, very inexpensive per user," Liu says. "We looked around and it's one of the lowest [costs per user]. Plus it does HD streaming. Those are the reasons we chose it."

MyTVPal plans to use the MatrixStream gear to offer both pay-per-view and advertising-supported video on demand—including, it hopes, movies from major studios. Plus it will offer high-quality streaming video channels from conventional broadcasters, and internet-only streaming channels, all or most of which will be free.

Page two: The content