What is KontrolTV you say? Well if you have a few minutes, I’d like to tell you a story.

The story goes something like this:

• A couple of guys have a fantastic idea for a new product in a new market.
• They build a prototype and everyone loves it.
• So they decide to make a go of it and build a company around this idea.
• Then they hit every speed bump possible.
• But… they figure out a solution, do a slight pivot, and the company goes on to fame and fortune.

Well, we aren’t exactly in the fame and fortune category yet, but this is essentially the story of MOVL. If you’ve ever started a company or have been involved in a startup, this story probably sounds very familiar.

So that great idea that started it all was really more about a user experience than a technology or an app. We took a look at what was happening with mobile, and where things were headed with TV, and it was obvious that the two should work together. The idea was more than just using your tablet to control your tv, or using your phone as a game controller. It’s really about utilizing both screens as different “views” of the same application.

More importantly, it’s about getting multiple people involved in a collaborative and social experience around the TV. This is the key ingredient.

So that prototype we built (in October 2010) was called “WeDraw”. It’s basically a Pictionary style game where any number of people can use their mobile device to participate. We used the TV app as the “game board”, and the mobile app had different views for each person depending on whether it was their turn or not. When it’s your turn, you get a secret word to draw that appears on your device. You draw the word with your finger, and the drawing appears on the TV in real time. Then everyone else tries to guess the word by typing it in from their device. The guesses show up on the TV in real time too. We built it like a game show, with irreverent voice over taunting everyone as the game progresses. We quickly learned that people loved this style of interaction. It was so much fun to watch people play together, to see their faces and hear them laugh while they played.

We took the game to CES 2011, and won $200k from Samsung in a promotional contest for their new SmartTVs. It was a great start for MOVL, and Samsung become a strategic partner for us. We made more apps using the same type of experience like PokerFun, and WeTeli. We also landed on Google’s radar and they have since been great at promoting MOVL and highlighting our apps on GoogleTV.

Sounds great, so what were the speed bumps? Well the biggest one is that the SmartTV market barely even existed. We all believed it would be big, but it’s certainly wasn’t then, and is just starting to take off now. Even worse was the fragmentation in terms of development platforms for SmartTV. Not to mention we built mobile companion apps for both iOS and Android. We wanted to bring our apps to all SmartTVs, but quickly realized it was gonna be really difficult, time consuming and costly.

Another challenge was getting people to realize they had a SmartTV. Once people understand what a SmartTV is, they usually don’t even know that they have one. And most people throw away their TV remote. While cord cutting may be happening, let’s face it, cable is still king, and most people use their cable remote and ditch the TV remote. But you need that TV remote to download your TV apps, by digging through buried menus of… well stuff.

As MOVL developed more apps, we starting noticing how difficult it was for users to switch between apps. These are multiscreen apps, so to get it running, you had to download an app to the tv, start it, download an app to your phone, and start it. Rinse/repeat for every new app. For us, we would have to create an iOS app, an Android app, and various versions of the TV app, and then submit each app to 4 different places.

This was all nuts. It ought to be easy to create an app once and distribute to multiple SmartTV platforms. People shouldn’t have to download an app to their TV. Heck, they shouldn’t even have to pick up their TV remote to use our apps.

So to solve all of this, we built the KontrolTV platform. It’s a development and publishing platform that gives developers the ability to easily create multiscreen apps for SmartTVs. It provides all the device connectivity, including the ability to launch the app on your TV directly from your mobile device.

The KontrolTV platform solves a lot of problems that are preventing SmartTVs and multiscreen apps from becoming mainstream. There’s only one app to get on your TV and mobile device. All the “experiences” that run within KontrolTV get loaded dynamically via the cloud, so there’s nothing to download. We also standardized on HTML5 for both TV and mobile apps, so there’s a consistent developer workflow.

We’ve partnered with the leading SmartTV manufacturers and over the next few months, KontrolTV will most likely show up on your TV.

Until KontrolTV is fully deployed to SmartTVs, we’ve made it work right on our site:Kontrol.TV All you have to do is download the iOS or Android app, and you can try it online. It’s just a taste of what’s to come and we are excited about the future of multiscreen apps.

Alan Queen
CTO – MOVL

Living Walls, the Atlanta street art expo that took place last month, lived up to its name with an app created by smart TV app purveyor MOVL. The crowd that gathered around the brick building housing the artist’s collective The Goat Farm controlled the projected images from their Android devices and iPhones. They could either digitally spray paint the walls of the building or project photos onto its windows. Beauty is in the eye of the app owner.

read the article from PCMag.com http://www.pcmag.com/slideshow/story/287532/street-art-goes-digital/3

“It’s great with my Sony google tv and 4 friends ”

“THIS GAME IS SO COOL! I played it on my Google TV for the first time the other day and its so much fun!”

“An innovating idea.”

THANK YOU!!!!

The rate of growth in Samsung’s store has been quite impressive. Late last year, Samsung announced that its store hit the one-million-downloads mark, 268 days after the marketplace launched. In January, the store reached 2 million downloads. What’s more, the company’s applications inventory is growing quite rapidly. According to Samsung, it now has over 900 applications available to folks to download to their HDTVs.
To help improve its apps offering, Samsung also announced today that it has opened up its Free the TV Challenge for 2011. The company held the challenge last year, asking developers to create an application for its TV marketplace. Last year’s winner was WeDraw, an application for both Samsung televisions and iOS and Android, that let users draw pictures from their mobile devices, and see the big-screen version of those images in real-time on their sets.
Related stories:
• Samsung tries to woo TV app developers
• Samsung TV apps hit 1 million downloads
• App downloads top 2 million on Samsung TVs
This time around, Samsung is challenging developers to create “converged apps”–programs that can work across multiple screens, including televisions and iOS and Android-based smartphones or tablets.
Samsung says that it would like for developers to consider applications that let users control their televisions from mobile devices, as well as companion apps that provide additional information to what’s already available on the television. Interactive applications that use a smartphone or tablet as a secondary display are also welcome, Samsung said.
Although television applications have yet to come into their own the way mobile applications have, there is a growing number of people who are warming to the idea of doing more than just watch movies and television shows on their sets. In fact, Samsung told CNET in a phone conversation last week that 50 percent of the people who own its line of HDTVs connect to the Internet from them.
Samsung’s Free the TV Challenge is accepting submissions between today and November 29. The company plans to judge the entries and ask for public voting between December 2 and December 16. The winner will be announced on January 13.
Samsung says that the top developer will receive $100,000, a 65-inch Samsung LED D8000 television, a 32GB Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet, and a two-month stint as one of the recommended applications in the Samsung Apps store. Second- and third-place winners will receive $75,000 and $50,000, respectively. They will also both receive a 55-inch Samsung LED D8000 and a Galaxy Tab 10.1.

Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-20104789-17/samsung-tv-apps-downloads-near-10-million/#ixzz1XwBVFTE4

The new challenge is designed to celebrate the recent release of version 2.5 of Samsung’s Software Development Kit (SDK 2.5), create excitement among developers and showcase Samsung’s unique ecosystem, which allows developers to create an entirely new category of “Converged Apps” – apps that work across multiple screens, running on both the TV and another device such as a phone, tablet or computer – to create new experiences for consumers.

The winner of last year’s Challenge – MOVL’s WeDraw – represents a perfect example of Converged Apps. By simply installing the WeDraw app on both a Samsung TV and any iOS or Android phone or tablet, users can use the handheld device to draw pictures that appear in real time on the TV. Other players then race to guess the word by typing their guesses into their phones.

“Samsung Apps has become the most popular TV Apps platform in the industry, with more than 900 apps available worldwide and nearly 10 million downloads to date,” said Eric Anderson, VP of Content for Samsung Electronics America. “In addition, our Galaxy mobile phones and tablets have also been incredibly well received. The time is right to bring these devices together with Converged Apps. I’m excited and energized to see what creative ideas our developer community will come up with.”

There are three categories of Converged Apps that Samsung is encouraging developers to explore:

1) Controller Apps – These Apps enable a second device to control an App on the TV, thus providing touch or mouse input and interactivity that a standard remote control cannot.
2) Companion Apps – These Apps use a second device to provide additional information (including via web sites and social media sites) that is synchronized to, and supplements, what is shown on the TV itself.
3) Interactive Apps – These Apps allow the user to use a second device as a secondary display. For example, a user can pause a video on the TV and resume it on the other device.
To participate, developers can simply visit www.FreeTheTVChallenge.com to enter the competition and find information about downloading SDK 2.5. SDK is available free of charge at the Samsung D Forum site, www.samsungdforum.com, where interested developers can also find guides, tutorials, a Q&A section, and an emulator. The Samsung D Forum site also provides a community for developers to ask questions, discuss ideas and concepts, and otherwise interact.

MOVL, LLC, the developer of WeDraw, is also making its MOVL Connect™ Platform available to developers free of charge during the contest entry period. This service provides both tools and cloud-based infrastructure to developers, freeing them from concerns about bandwidth and servers when creating applications bridging multiple devices. “We are honored that Samsung has included MOVL in the new challenge. Last year we had a blast developing applications as contestants, and this year we are happy to share our technology and help other developers create multi-user, multi-screen TV apps.” said Juan Pablo Gnecco, CEO of MOVL. The MOVL Connect™ Platform, documentation and examples are available to developers at http://connect.movl.com/samsung.

The esteemed panel of judges for the Free the TV Challenge 2011 includes James McQuivey (VP, Principal Analyst, Forrester), Ross Rubin (Executive Director, Industry Analysis, The NPD Group), Bob Borchers (General Partner, Opus Capital), Eric Anderson (VP of Content for Samsung Electronics America), Peggy Ang (VP of Marketing for Samsung Electronics America) and Greg Dudey (VP of User Experience for Samsung Electronics America).* The competition is powered by ChallengePost, a web platform that enables social problem solving.

Winners will be announced in Las Vegas at the 2012 International CES. The first prize winner will receive $100,000, a 65-inch Samsung LED TV and a Samsung Galaxy Tab. The winning app will also be highlighted in Samsung Apps, the world’s first HDTV dedicated apps store.

Full Prize List:

1st Prize:
$100,000
65” LED D8000 series Smart TV (estimated retail value $6,000)
Galaxy Tab 10.1 – 32GB (estimated retail value $600)
2nd Prize:
$75,000
55” LED D8000 series Smart TV (estimated retail value $3,500)
Galaxy Tab 10.1 – 32GB (estimated retail value $600)
3rd Prize:
$50,000
55” LED D8000 series Smart TV (estimated retail value $3,500)
Galaxy Tab 10.1 – 32GB (estimated retail value $600)
*Final panel of judges subject to change

About MOVL, LLC

Headquartered in Atlanta, MOVL, LLC is driving innovation in the social TV app revolution by creating connectivity between smartphones and smart TVs through its MOVL Connect™ Platform. The proprietary platform allows for quick deployment of multi-user and multi-device applications. The MOVL Connect™ platform is available to developers at connect.movl.com. For more information about the company and the platform technology visit www.movl.com.

About Samsung Electronics America, Inc.

Headquartered in Ridgefield Park, NJ, Samsung Electronics America, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., markets a broad range of award-winning, digital consumer electronics and home appliance products, including HDTVs, home theater systems, MP3 players, digital imaging products, refrigerators and washing machines. A recognized innovation leader in consumer electronics design and technology, Samsung is the HDTV market leader in the U.S. Please visit www.samsung.com/us for more information.

Pokerfun is MOVL’s second stab at bringing this kind of cross-device interactivity to Google TV after launching the WeDraw game in May. The company’s CTO and founder Alan Queen told me during a phone conversation today that it’s not just about having fun with casual gaming. “The apps we are developing right now are to showcase our platform,” he said.

Check out a demo video of Pokerfun below:

MOVL’s core technology allows the company to connect Android and iOS mobile devices with TV platforms like Google TV, even if the individual devices don’t reside on the same network. For apps like Pokerfun, it will first check whether your Google TV device and the phones of all contestants are using the same WiFi network, and if possible utilize that infrastructure for all communications. However, if you have friends who are using their phone via 3G, it simply relays all data through MOVL’s servers.

This kind of infrastructure also makes it possible to extend the social hub functionality of TVs beyond a single living room. MOVL is currently working on a TV-based video jukebox that can be controlled via mobile phones, and Queen said that this would also work well in a bar setting.

Even more exciting could be the ability to pair two Google TV devices, making it possible to have people play poker over the Internet against each other while still using their mobile phones to control the experience. And then there’s the big goal down the line, which could be described as a kind of massively multiplayer TV app: What if, Queen asked, patrons in a sports bar could control an app with their mobile phones, with the same app also being displayed on a jumbotron in a sports arena?

Queen said that his startups is currently working with a few companies to develop branded cross-platform TV apps. But MOVL is also exploring options to license its platform to third-party Google TV app developers that are interested in bringing this kind of mulit-platform interactivity to their own apps. “Eventually, we’d like to open it up and make it available to anyone,” Queen said.

Article from GIGAOM