Think of the last time you tried to watch a video on a website, only to be greeted a question mark because your mobile phone can’t support flash. Annoying, huh? What if, instead of flash, video players were coded with HTML5 technologies only? No longer will you need external plugins to load such media as long as your Web browser supports HTML5. What if we said one company has already managed to do that, and in the process, created a way to personalize HTML5-branded video players?
In an era where the Internet is more prevalent in our daily lives, it was only natural that getting its content to load in all our Web-connected devices worked well – and fast. You may notice that most major video hosting websites have a standard look to their players: YouTube has the red status bar, Vimeo boasts its giant blue Play button. With its latest product, Jilion, a Switzerland-based company, aims to revolutionize the new standard of Web video players. The HTML5-based “SublimeVideo Horizon” technology allow users to customize players to look like whatever they desire. This includes adding personalized shortcut buttons, external links, custom fonts, and even logos slapped on the status bar.
“We are the first and only technology provider to deliver a solution that will bring back this rich, graphical interaction layer that was on any browsers and latest mobile devices,” Jilion co-founder Mehdi Aminian tells us. “With our technology, we can be any player such as a General Motors or Sony-branded player.”
Below is a sample of Sony’s branded player embedded just like any regular YouTube video would.
As you can see, the video player built in HTML5 will load the same whether you browse it on Chrome, Internet Explorer, Firefox, or on your MacBook, PC, tablets, or smartphones. “Everything is vector graphics, so it loads perfectly regardless of platform. Pinch to zoom has no pixelation effect,” Jilion’s second co-founder Zeno Crivelli says. A demonstration of this on Crivelli’s Nexus 7 tablet proves his point. The team did note, however, that they are still working on iOS 6’s browser since it does not support fully HTML5 just yet. “Hopefully iOS 7 will support the HTML5 interaction layer.”
It’s a technology that took three years to develop and is finally surfacing to major Web developers and brands. Currently, Jilion has Sony on board with its brand new technology and is continuing to pique the interests of other major companies. “We have Ralph Lauren, Qualcomm, Acitivision, and NPR among others interested in our service,” Aminian says. “Our vision is that somehow, the basic YouTube player will become bizarre. A personalized, customized player will become highly desired to express each person and company’s identity and it can spread across blogs on any social media platform. A basic standard player like YouTube’s will become obsolete; something of the past.”
If more companies hop on the trend, you can be sure the future of video players will look slick, personalized, and most importantly – it will actually load. For more examples of what customized video players look like with the SublimeVideo Horizon framework, check them out here.
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