thePlatform is a Seattle, WA-based online video publishing company, which was acquired by Comcast

Comcast

Comcast Corporation is the largest cable operator, home Internet service provider, and fourth largest home telephone service provider in the United States, providing cable television, broadband Internet, and telephone service to both residential and commercial customers in 39 states and the...

 in 2006. Founded in 2000 by Ian Blaine, Alan Ramaley, Rahul Sonnad, and Andrew Olson, the company works with digital media companies to manage and publish video and audio.

History

thePlatform was founded in 2000 by Ian Blaine, Andrew Olson, Alan Ramaley, and Rahul Sonnad. Previously, in 1998, Blaine founded an online personal information management company, Uniplanet, which was acquired by NBCi in 1999.

Products

thePlatform offers two video management platforms, mpx Beta, and their legacy, Media Publishing System (mps). thePlatform released mpx Beta in February of 2010, but still offers customers access to the legacy mps system. thePlatform's third product is the mpx Dev Kit.

mpx Dev Kit

The mpx Dev Kit allows access to thePlatform's REST-based application programming interfaces (APIs).

mps

thePlatform's Media Publishing System (mps) is composed of four sub-products, mpsManage, mpsConnect, mpsPresent, and mpsExperts.

mpsManage

mpsManage is thePlatform's suite of products centered around publishing online and mobile video. mpsManage includes:

Ingest Service
tools for programmatically (or manually) uploading media into thePlatform's management console

Management Console
An interface for managing media. Functions of the Console include application of meta-data, application of business policies, and publishing media.

Transcoding Service
thePlatform hosts their own transcoding service, available in either a standard farm, or dedicated boxes.

Remote Media Processor
For large tasks, thePlatform can deploy a Remote Media Processor.

mps Software Development Kit
thePlatform allows for development against their APIs.

CDN and Storage Services
CDN and Storage fees integrated into thePlatform's system.

mpsPresent

mpsPresent is thePlatform's suite of products centered around video display.

Feeds Service
A subscription service for online video syndication.

Player Designer
A WYSIWYG broadband video player development console.

Player Development Kit
Flash-based broadband video development kit.

Community Toolkit
A console for application of community features to broadband video.

Purchase by Comcast

In June 2006, Comcast

Comcast

Comcast Corporation is the largest cable operator, home Internet service provider, and fourth largest home telephone service provider in the United States, providing cable television, broadband Internet, and telephone service to both residential and commercial customers in 39 states and the...

 purchased the Seattle-based software company thePlatform. This represented Comcast's entry into a new line of business, selling software to allow companies to manage their Internet (and IP-based) media publishing efforts.

Internet TV Partnerships

Customers of thePlatform include BBC Worldwide, PBS

Public Broadcasting Service

The Public Broadcasting Service is an American non-profit public broadcasting television network with 354 member TV stations in the United States which hold collective ownership. Its headquarters is in Arlington, Virginia....

, CNBC

CNBC

CNBC is a satellite and cable television business news channel in the U.S., owned and operated by NBCUniversal. The network and its international spinoffs cover business headlines and provide live coverage of financial markets. The combined reach of CNBC and its siblings is 390 million viewers...

, CBS College Sports, AP, NBC Local, and HiT Entertainment. thePlatform used to provide video management for Hulu

Hulu

Hulu is a website and over-the-top subscription service offering ad-supported on-demand streaming video of TV shows, movies, webisodes and other new media, trailers, clips, and behind-the-scenes footage from NBC, Fox, ABC, and Obstacle on October 20th 2011 Nickelodeon and CBS and many other...

, the joint venture by NBC Universal and News Corporation providing on-demand, ad-supported television programming owned by NBC

NBC

The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...

, Universal Studios, and Fox Tv.

Over-the-Top

thePlatform's video publishing system, mpx can enable customers to publish video to over-the-top (OTT) services and IP-connected set-top boxes, TVs and Blu-ray Players, and online services from companies including Boxee, DivX, Free Stream Media, Mitsubishi, LG, Roku, Samsung, Syabas, TiVo, Toshiba, VUDU, VIZIO and others.

External links

• thePlatform
• Comcast
• Comcast buys Seattle's thePlatform (28 Jun 2006)
• Comcast's ThePlatform To Handle Back-End For Internet TV Project (20 Feb 2009)