Stream Media Player

Highlights

In 2008, due to the rapid growth of mobile application users, our company decided to develop a Stream Media Player for Android. This application was a proprietary freeware product of Professional Software Associates that could be downloaded from the Android Market.

Challenge

The project was to investigate streaming capabilities of the Android Framework and develop a stream player with expandable architecture. This was also to demonstrate PSA’s capability of applying new features to Android phones for future potential clients.

Solution

The application allowed the user to view web videos, Internet TV, and locally stored multimedia files. It also featured the ability to save links for automatic recall. The media player also contained pre-configured links to launch easily, and an Internet Radio Widget. The application supported JPEG and Motion JPEG web cameras as well as H.263/H.264 RTSP streams widely supported by mobile devices.

On October 30, 2009, it was published to the Android Market as a free application. Users of Android phones could download and install the Stream Media Player directly from the Android Market. Within 10 months after its initial publishing on the Android Market, the number of the Stream Media Player application downloads exceeded 150,000. The Player gained popularity among Android phone users. In the Guest Book of the product the majority of the comments were positive with some practical suggestions on improvement. PSA took into consideration the feedback from the Android Market forum on improvements to be made to the Stream Player. Thanks to the reviews, new versions of the player have been delivered, with a total of 7 releases.

Updated applications contained the following new features and more:

Rapid rotation for video screen
Extended Internet Radio support
Improved performance and stability
Ability to filter WMV files while opening
Hidden status bar for full-screen mode
Repairs on minor defects

The PSA team provided support for servers which did not allow for direct video playing. In this case, the video content had been downloaded and then played as local content.

The Stream Media Player later became available for download in two versions: Free and Pro. Both shared the same functionality, with the Free version displaying promotional banners.