An exclusive interview with the rabbit video team: the original idea originated from "laziness" | love computer games

With the popularity of Internet TV, the deepening of tri networks integration, the improvement of network bandwidth, and the boost of box manufacturers, a living room revolution is poised. As Cook said, "When I went to the living room and turned on the TV, I felt like I was back 20 or 30 years ago. This is a field that can bring huge benefits." The reinvention of television has become the core of the living room revolution. The Internet will also officially enter the living room Internet era from the PC Internet and mobile Internet era. But at present, this revolution is still in its infancy, with many box manufacturers and imperfect application experiences. We see a video aggregation application—— Rabbit video , which solves the problem of watching videos on TV. We also interviewed the rabbit video team, as the domestic pioneer of the living room revolution, to see what enlightenment it can bring to the peers.

Q: At present, there are not many software companies doing content for the set-top box market. Where was the original inspiration for our rabbit video?

A： I am a film and television drama lover. The company has been busy all day, and I don't want to climb up to the computer to watch videos when I go home. I saw a lot of HD network set-top boxes on the market, so I bought one to experience it, and found that the video application installed on it was either the Pad version or the mobile version, and it could not be fully operated with the remote control. It works when you connect the wireless mouse, but the small characters on the icon are too small to see clearly, let alone whether the interface is beautiful. All of these can be overcome, but the biggest problem is that I come to watch movies and TV plays, but I must first know which client has the movie, and then I can choose to open that client to play it.

I'm here to relax, okay? Don't want to be a loser staring at the TV and searching one by one with the mouse. This is true of almost all boxes sold on the market, even the so-called smart TV.

So I thought, can I solve this problem by myself? Let everyone have a better "viewing experience". Lying on the sofa, holding the remote control or mobile device, you can watch all online videos from one place.

Q: Did you encounter any difficulties or obstacles in the process of making rabbit videos?

A： When you have an idea, start doing it. On the way, I found that it was not as simple as I imagined.

Start with the most important question. If you want to search the online video of the whole network in one place, you must develop a search engine and use web crawlers to retrieve the address of the playing page of each online video website for indexing and saving. There are dozens of websites providing online video on demand services. We have spent a lot of time on the search engine, and finally established a basic film and television play data index library, and developed a crawler program that automatically stores the database to update the library at any time.

The search question has an idea. Next is another long-standing problem, the end-user experience.

From the very beginning, we clearly specified that the target device of the client must be able to run on various mainstream high-definition Android network players, the interface must adapt to 720p and 1080p LCD TVs, and all operations must be completed with a remote control.

The development team started to work from the beginning of 2012, and the interaction design and program framework construction began to be intensively launched. It took four months to complete the first version and start the internal test, and the first beta version was released in May.

The biggest problem encountered in the development process is the play of the movie. Video websites generally use flash as players. There is no big problem on the PC, but there is a problem on the box. First of all, the CPU processing capacity of the box is generally not strong. Running flash often leads to high system load, and video playback is very difficult. The box's powerful hardware decoding ability has not been brought into play; Secondly, the player interface of each website is different, and the remote control operation support is not good, which will lead to a very poor user experience. Rabbit has basically solved this problem after a lot of efforts.

Although the first version was immature, it received good feedback from box users. At that time point, there were few software for large screen remote control devices on the market. Even if there were, they were limited to their own devices. Therefore, Rabbit won the first batch of users. Distributors of various box manufacturers also started to actively help promote and preload. During this period, we also reached cooperative relations with some manufacturers.

In response to a large number of usability feedback from users, the rabbit team began to develop related software one by one to meet the needs of smart TV/box users. The rabbit TV assistant is used to implement software recommendation and mobile phone remote control service, the rabbit desktop is used to implement the shortcut operation after the box is turned on, and the ios mobile phone and Android mobile phone client are developed to implement remote control free operation, finally forming the current rabbit software family.

Q: What are the advantages of Rabbit Video over other similar applications?

A： At present, there are not many applications of video aggregation, and they are all aimed at mobile phones or tablets. Compared with other video aggregation applications, we have several outstanding advantages:

1) Fully optimize the operation mode of HD display equipment and remote control, with good user experience;
2) There are 20 aggregating websites with the most abundant resources, basically including mainstream video websites in mainland China;
3) Support the interactive operation between mobile phone client and box/smart TV terminal. It has both the rabbit private protocol and the Apple Airplay protocol.

Q: Now, Rabbit Video has also accumulated a certain number of users and good reputation. What is the ideal of Rabbit Video next?

A： The ideal of rabbit video is to make it easier and more convenient for users to watch movies on the large screen, and it can be used by both the elderly and children. For this ideal, the rabbit video client has undergone two generations of interface changes and is continuously improving; In order to achieve this goal, Rabbit Search has conducted two large-scale reconstructions, and the number of online video websites including search results has increased to 20.

In terms of hardware, Rabbit keeps an open attitude and tries to achieve maximum compatibility. At present, it has been able to run stably on the box equipment of most mainstream solutions. Of course, it also includes the hot millet box recently. The latest third-party update package of millet box came from the rabbit team.