Interview with Jobaya’s Philip John
Jobaya is a self-funded startup based in Cardiff, South Wales, that aims to offer a pay-per-view streaming video-on-demand service in the UK later this summer.
It’s a little different from video streaming services you may have encountered elsewhere.
Jobaya’s target audience is people on the move, who wish to watch video content on a whim and in bite-sized chunks.
Under construction for the last six months and now undergoing user testing, Jobaya is a device-independent platform based on a webapp at the consumer end with all the real processing done server-side.
Consequently it should run on pretty much any device with an up-to-date browser, but founder Philip John told Photocine News that iPhone and iPad users would be primary targets from the outset.
Content will be a variety of movies and TV shows, depending on license deals that are yet to be finalized. Prices will be at “market rates”, said John. “You pay about £3.50 for a movie in iTunes, which I think is a bit expensive,” he said. “But that gives you an idea.”
There won’t be any advertising, nor a subscription fee. Jobaya will be strictly pay-as-you-go.
“This is a service for people who want to snack on video content, whatever sort of content it might be,” said John. “People don’t want to put up with adverts, nor do they want to have to pay a subscription for something they may or may not use. With pay-on-demand, it’s a lot simpler.”
The aim is to create a simple client that remembers the point where you last paused or stopped viewing your video, and automatically resumes from that point next time you return to the app.
Testing in the cafés of Cardiff has shown that decent video quality is possible over 3G phone networks and on the tiny screen of the iPhone. Larger screen devices, such as the iPad, won’t work over 3G and will require a WiFi connection.
So far, 400 titles – John didn’t give any names or titles – have been saved in a variety of formats, ready for streaming. (Jobaya is using Amazon’s cloud services for storage and scalability.) John hopes that 1,500 will be available at launch, which should be “some time this summer.”
