Freecast, the company behind Rabbit TV, has announced plans to launch a new feature that would scrape up more content from the Web and serve it up on one full-sized video platter.
The new “Media Aggregation Platform” (MAP) will bring in popular free and paid video-on-demand content available on the Web to complement the existing content the service already offers. Rabbit TV Plus subscribers would be able to browse and view free and paid video-on-demand content in addition to the live events, streaming channels, and radio stations it already aggregates.
The move is meant to follow the trend of “subscription-based libraries from traditional TV networks rapidly going online,” according to the press release. The idea is to collect these content sources, present them in one interface and with a single payment system so that users’ paid content shows up on one monthly bill.
The move does seem to jive with what the Rabbit TV actually does, which is scour the Internet for whatever video content people may want to watch and simplifies access to it. It reckons the MAP will add another layer of convenience to that in cases where users “give up if they don’t find what they’re looking for from a few well-known sources like Netflix or Hulu.” Moreover, Freecast is positioning this as a solution to everyone — consumers, the TV and movie industries and advertisers — as a way to bridge the gap for access to a wider subset of users.
“The consumer simply wants to pick and pay for their own bundle of channels from an online emulation of what they had with cable, and on at least three or four device types. We can accomplish this for the consumers and major media networks with our Media Aggregation Platform. It’s Over-the-Top of OTT,” says William Mobley, CEO at Freecast.
Mobley didn’t confirm a specific timeframe for the MAP initiative other than its intentions, so we’ll have to wait and see how it plays out — literally.
