Why Top Brands Use This Disney Backed Startup to Host Their VR Content

Heatmaps, VR analytics, and What HTC and Oculus can learn from Playstation VR with Tony Mugavero

Tony Mugavero is an experienced tech entrepreneur and executive with a media, business, and computer engineering background.

In our talk we discuss why top brands are choosing to use Littlstar. What Sony knows over HTC and Oculus. And why the question “Is 360 video is real VR or not” is irrelevant .

Littlstar is a premium cinematic Virtual Reality network putting viewers at the center of experiences using immersive technologies. Littlstar has channels from the the best VR content creators in the world like ABC, Showtime, Disney, Nat Geo, Discovery, PBS, Red Bull, Virgin and more.

What’s your mission at Littlstar, what do you guys hope to accomplish?

TM: We founded the company for two reasons: One, there was no way to easily discover great VR experiences, particularly 360 video, when the VR movement kicked off. Two, we noticed that anyone trying to create any video-related content was creating a single package for the Oculus as a download. You had to download an executable that had the content wrapped up in it. It was a terrible user experience and annoying for content creators to make an .exe for every piece of content.

So, we built a streaming network to make it much easier to discover content and easy for networks, brands, and content owners to push this content into the cloud and have it just automatically packaged up and distributed easily across devices.

As content creators and consumers of VR ourselves, we really wanted to solve our own problem, and it started to manifest into something much bigger. Discovery, Nat Geo, ABC, NBC, Showtime, and Disney have all been putting content on Littlstar because we’ve stayed true to that mission from day one.

tl;dr — Littlstar was founded when Tony, Matt, and Dom recognized that there wasn’t a high-end video content destination in the VR universe.

How are you guys different from the other names that come up when we speak about VR video hosting?

TM: I think it’s a combination of things that put us into a unique space. We’ve always been heavy on the curation, so you almost don’t see any user generated content as your first experience, even though it’s there. We are an open network, but if you come to Littlstar vs. YouTube or Facebook, for example, there are very clear differences in the experience. On Littlstar, you’re only seeing premium immersive content.

We generally work closely with content owners in a much higher touch way, so If Showtime wants to send us a file that is 100 GB, we have the things in place to take that file and put it into our system and run optimized encoding. You are not uploading a 100 GB file to Facebook or YouTube. We’ve positioned ourselves in a way that has separated us from other VR video startups as well. If you look at companies like Jaunt or Within, we have content from produced by both of those companies on Littlstar. Content owners hired them, they produced great content, and we distribute it. A real ecosystem is starting to develop, and you can tell the companies that have focused on the various parts of it based on what’s actually in the market.

We’ve also done things like built a creator’s dashboard, which has open analytics. Any content owner on Littlstar can view all of their analytics and VR heatmaps. You also don’t think of the little things required to have a global network, like geo restrictions based on content licenses, different audio solutions and support, 2D and 3D, etc. That stuff takes time and effort from a dedicated team to build.

The ability to login, track people’s interests, feed them content that’s interesting to them, and the creation of premium channels, in combination with our focus on discovery and distribution, all line up positioning Littlstar in the market as a global leader. Big networks and publishers come to us to create a presence because we are dedicated and focused to providing the best network. We’ve developed trust that if your content gets on the homepage of Littlstar, it will be there with ABC, NBC, and Showtime.

Being open has also helped us find awesome content. TNT created a channel on Littlstar without us even being involved. When we saw their content come in, we engaged them, put together all the best assets, promoted the content, and blasted everything out on social and email in close coordination with their team. It’s a good balance of openness, scalability, and being high touch. You can manage your content on Littlstar, and we also engage and get very hands on in making content shine.

tl;dr — Littlstar believes that by presenting themselves as a premium content destination and giving their content creators extremely good services and analytics, they set themselves up to receive high end content. Oh, also HEAT MAPS IN VR.

This beach scene lacks a clear focus (Littlstar)

This scene filmed by Lexus and ABC for the show Quantico, shows a clearer focus (Littlstar)

Wait, you have heat maps for the actual content for the video themselves?

TM: Yes, so we track multiple times a second where people are looking, and we have a cluster of machines that creates heat maps that lay over the video so you can see exactly what’s working, and what’s not working.

Where do you see the most growth and traction, on which of the VR platforms?

TM: We are the most excited about PS VR (PlayStation VR) and Mobile VR. We built our mobile apps first, since you can watch 360 video without a VR headset, or you can pop in a mobile VR viewer. Then we built for Gear VR, Rift, Rift, and Vive, but during that time we really focused on the PSVR.

The reason the PSVR is so interesting is the combination of functionality and price. You can have a PS4 and a PS VR for $800, which is the total cost of a Vive or a Rift. You may not have 2 GTX1080s running room scale VR, but it almost doesn’t matter. It feels really great in terms of the experiences, and it’s definitely powerful enough to give you immersion. The price seals the deal.

PSVR is also the most comfortable of all VR devices, including the Gear VR, primarily because of one one thing: the device sits on top of your head, and it doesn’t rest on your face. The display telescopes in and out to your eyes. It’s super lightweight and feels like you’re wearing a hat.