Why Top Brands Use This Disney Backed Startup to Host Their VR Content
Heatmaps, VR analytics, and What HTC and Oculus can learn from Playstation VR with Tony Mugavero
Tony Mugavero is an experienced tech entrepreneur and executive with a media, business, and computer engineering background.
In our talk we discuss why top brands are choosing to use Littlstar. What Sony knows over HTC and Oculus. And why the question “Is 360 video is real VR or not” is irrelevant .
Littlstar is a premium cinematic Virtual Reality network putting viewers at the center of experiences using immersive technologies. Littlstar has channels from the the best VR content creators in the world like ABC, Showtime, Disney, Nat Geo, Discovery, PBS, Red Bull, Virgin and more.
What’s your mission at Littlstar, what do you guys hope to accomplish?
TM: We founded the company for two reasons: One, there was no way to easily discover great VR experiences, particularly 360 video, when the VR movement kicked off. Two, we noticed that anyone trying to create any video-related content was creating a single package for the Oculus as a download. You had to download an executable that had the content wrapped up in it. It was a terrible user experience and annoying for content creators to make an .exe for every piece of content.
So, we built a streaming network to make it much easier to discover content and easy for networks, brands, and content owners to push this content into the cloud and have it just automatically packaged up and distributed easily across devices.
As content creators and consumers of VR ourselves, we really wanted to solve our own problem, and it started to manifest into something much bigger. Discovery, Nat Geo, ABC, NBC, Showtime, and Disney have all been putting content on Littlstar because we’ve stayed true to that mission from day one.
tl;dr — Littlstar was founded when Tony, Matt, and Dom recognized that there wasn’t a high-end video content destination in the VR universe.
How are you guys different from the other names that come up when we speak about VR video hosting?
TM: I think it’s a combination of things that put us into a unique space. We’ve always been heavy on the curation, so you almost don’t see any user generated content as your first experience, even though it’s there. We are an open network, but if you come to Littlstar vs. YouTube or Facebook, for example, there are very clear differences in the experience. On Littlstar, you’re only seeing premium immersive content.
We generally work closely with content owners in a much higher touch way, so If Showtime wants to send us a file that is 100 GB, we have the things in place to take that file and put it into our system and run optimized encoding. You are not uploading a 100 GB file to Facebook or YouTube. We’ve positioned ourselves in a way that has separated us from other VR video startups as well. If you look at companies like Jaunt or Within, we have content from produced by both of those companies on Littlstar. Content owners hired them, they produced great content, and we distribute it. A real ecosystem is starting to develop, and you can tell the companies that have focused on the various parts of it based on what’s actually in the market.
We’ve also done things like built a creator’s dashboard, which has open analytics. Any content owner on Littlstar can view all of their analytics and VR heatmaps. You also don’t think of the little things required to have a global network, like geo restrictions based on content licenses, different audio solutions and support, 2D and 3D, etc. That stuff takes time and effort from a dedicated team to build.
The ability to login, track people’s interests, feed them content that’s interesting to them, and the creation of premium channels, in combination with our focus on discovery and distribution, all line up positioning Littlstar in the market as a global leader. Big networks and publishers come to us to create a presence because we are dedicated and focused to providing the best network. We’ve developed trust that if your content gets on the homepage of Littlstar, it will be there with ABC, NBC, and Showtime.
Being open has also helped us find awesome content. TNT created a channel on Littlstar without us even being involved. When we saw their content come in, we engaged them, put together all the best assets, promoted the content, and blasted everything out on social and email in close coordination with their team. It’s a good balance of openness, scalability, and being high touch. You can manage your content on Littlstar, and we also engage and get very hands on in making content shine.
tl;dr — Littlstar believes that by presenting themselves as a premium content destination and giving their content creators extremely good services and analytics, they set themselves up to receive high end content. Oh, also HEAT MAPS IN VR.
Wait, you have heat maps for the actual content for the video themselves?
TM: Yes, so we track multiple times a second where people are looking, and we have a cluster of machines that creates heat maps that lay over the video so you can see exactly what’s working, and what’s not working.
Where do you see the most growth and traction, on which of the VR platforms?
TM: We are the most excited about PS VR (PlayStation VR) and Mobile VR. We built our mobile apps first, since you can watch 360 video without a VR headset, or you can pop in a mobile VR viewer. Then we built for Gear VR, Rift, Rift, and Vive, but during that time we really focused on the PSVR.
The reason the PSVR is so interesting is the combination of functionality and price. You can have a PS4 and a PS VR for $800, which is the total cost of a Vive or a Rift. You may not have 2 GTX1080s running room scale VR, but it almost doesn’t matter. It feels really great in terms of the experiences, and it’s definitely powerful enough to give you immersion. The price seals the deal.
PSVR is also the most comfortable of all VR devices, including the Gear VR, primarily because of one one thing: the device sits on top of your head, and it doesn’t rest on your face. The display telescopes in and out to your eyes. It’s super lightweight and feels like you’re wearing a hat.
I didn’t take notice of that innovation. Cool.
TM: Yeah, Sony has been building devices that are meant to consume entertainment for decades, and that’s something that the others haven’t been doing. The other players could take some notes from what Sony brought to the table.
tl;dr — They’re most excited for the coming of Playstation VR and have great growth on Mobile VR platforms such as the Gear VR. Also, the PSVR is comfortable as heck and other manufacturers should be taking notes.
What excites you about your job or about the industry?
TM: We get to play with VR all day! There are so many new challenges in this space, and so much magic to pass around. We want to be the messengers of the magic. We get to work with the most recognizable names in the entertainment world and say, “Here are the things that you should do to get people excited..” It’s awesome.
tl;dr — VR is fun.
Interesting. What’s holding you back resource-wise? Is it technical, human resources, whatever, what’s holding you back?
TM: Yeah, from a technical standpoint, we always bump up against hardware limitations. We are trying to always push the boundaries of increasing quality, and we are at the limits of what hardware can do right now. Even on the Rift and Vive with a super powerful PC, there’s still a limitation on the screen resolution, codecs, and network bandwidth.
tl;dr — Even with the high end platforms there exist limitations on processing power.
What lessons have you guys learned and what can you offer to people joining the VR industry?
TM: We’ve learned so many lessons. As with anything, it’s most important that you just start banging around and making your own mistakes depending on what it is that you’re trying to do, whether it’s content creation or interactive experiences or infrastructure tools or whatever. Definitely, the one thing we’ve learned is that still, nobody knows what is going on. Nobody really knows where the most compelling experiences are going to come from.
I think 360 video kind of took the industry by surprise, and there’s a weird kind of silent war going on that 360 video in a VR headset is actually VR.
I’ve been in panels where people have gotten in arguments in front of the audience on whether 360 video is VR or not. For the consumer, it doesn’t really matter what the definition is. What matters is if we can get a consumer into a VR headset. Is it a 360 video or an interactive experience? It doesn’t matter to them. We all need people to buy headsets, and we need to give them a good reason to do so.
When we are talking to content owners and producers and helping them think through content creation, we always run up against similar stories like, “We want to create something, but we don’t have very much money, and we want to get it into a VR headset.” As soon as they say we don’t have very much money or this is coming out of the experimental budget, that essentially eliminates the potential for anything interactive, and so they end up gravitating to 360 video.
That’s why 360 video has had so much interest in such a short period of time; it’s because it’s a good quick way for people to start testing immersive content without spending a ton of money. Obviously, that’s why our core business and strategy is 360 video, in VR headsets as well as outside of them.
tl;dr — They’ve learned a lot, and whether 360 video is VR or not doesn’t really matter because it gives people the ability to create experiences that fits their budgets.
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