‘Place-shifting’ technology, pioneered by companies like Sling Media with its SlingBox and SlingPlayer Mobile service, has proved popular with consumers but has not always lived up to expectations when the content is streamed and the end user device is a smartphone.
Now however AT&T, the US telecommunications group, has rolled out a new free iPhone and Blackberry Torch app that it claims will enable subscribers to its U-verse IPTV service to download and watch select TV episodes on their device over a Wi-Fi network as well as schedule DVR recordings.
Because the app will download the content over a Wi-Fi network to the handset is should avoid some of the technical glitches such as dropped frames and jitter that have hampered place-shifting services that rely on streaming content over 3G telecoms networks.
David Christopher, AT&T Mobility’s chief marketing officer, said the app would initially provide access to content from several popular networks carried on the U-verse service and would be expanded as AT&T negotiated additional agreements with content providers.
By negotiating such agreements AT&T clearly hopes to avoid the objections some content providers have raised in the past to other place-shifting services.
While consumer groups have been pushing for such ‘universal access’ services, content providers have been cautious in embracing the anytime/anywhere access model because of concerns that it could deprive them of potentially lucrative additional revenue streams.
AT&T appears to have broken the impasse with a service that, provided its works, also fulfills its promise to deliver U-verse video content to three screens – the TV, PC and smartphone.
