Company Interview Excerpt
PAUL FOROSTOWSKY - BLUESTREAK NETWORK
Full article published: 08/21/2006
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Mr. Forostowsky: Five years ago, we created technology that allows developers to use Flash®* authoring tools, combined with our own development kit, to create applications for digital television set-top boxes. Videotron, a cable company in Canada, deployed our player across their network and used it to create a really rich and dynamic experience for their digital TV customers. It gave them a lot of features that weren't available anywhere else. Then Time Warner Cable, the second-biggest operator in the US, with millions of set-top box customers, adopted our technology for its digital navigator. Bluestreak originally designed its technology for the set-top box device, which has much lower memory and resources than the other devices we are all used to. That technology was a great fit with mobile phones when we entered the wireless market, and this was only a couple years after we were founded. Orange is a big wireless operator in France and throughout Europe, and is the second biggest mobile network operator in the world. Orange has eight network wireless network operators in Europe, and they wanted to let consumers watch TV channels on their mobile handsets. Two years ago, they asked if we could put the Bluestreak player that powered interactive TV on the set-top box inside a mobile phone. They wanted to offer a lot of innovative features . . . program guides and end-user interfaces on top of the video, advertisements, games, voting, and polling. Orange saw a big opportunity to bring the best of interactive TV to mobile phones. So a year and a half ago, we installed our player inside Orange mobile phones, and since that time they've used it to launch some really successful mobile TV and video services. Orange has decided to extend this mobile TV product with Bluestreak to their eight countries in Europe, including the UK, Spain, Portugal, Poland, Sweden, and Romania. We are also implementing our player on a wide range of phones, including Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Motorola, Samsung, and Amoi, and many others. So the player, which runs Flash files, does video-overlay and gives viewers a better experience when they watch TV, whether it's on their phones or at home. We are based in Montreal with 60 engineers, and also have offices in Paris, Dallas, and Hong Kong.
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