Hi,

I'm @quochuy, I'm a witness on the Steem blockchain and I need your help to launch this new project on the Apple AppStore for the Apple TV.

Many times, I wanted to watch D.Tube videos on the TV but I feel it a bit painful to connect the HDMI cable or cannot do an AirPlay because my wife or kid is using the laptop. Wouldn't be an Apple TV be nice?

Well it happen that I have helped built an Apple TV app for the On Demand service of my company. I was more doing a backend job at the time but I had a little bit of exposure on the frontend side of things. The thing I noticed is that you can build an Apple TV app with just XML and Javascript knowledge and using predefined templates created by Apple.

So I decided to make the jump earlier last week and in a couple of days I had a working prototype which I kept on adding features to.

Why an Apple TV app?

This project will not only allow D.Tube and DSound fans to be able to enjoy decentralised content on their TV but it will also get Steem, D.Tube and DSound some exposure on the Apple App Store.

It's great to be able to watch videos and listen to audio content on the dapps but we need to bring the content outside of the Steem ecosystem and reach more users.

Since the launch of the 4th generation of Apple TV, users have now access to the App Store and download games and other video apps to be enjoyed on their TV.

There has been a surged in viewing hours according to Apple Insider:

https://appleinsider.com/articles/18/04/25/apple-tv-viewing-hours-surged-709-percent-in-march-quarter

And Apple TV, in 2017, had 21.3 million users:

https://variety.com/2017/digital/news/roku-apple-tv-chromecast-amazon-fire-tv-market-share-2017-1202506850/

Getting Steem out there is important.

Steem Telly

Steem Telly is born... well... not right yet... It's currently only working inside the Apple TV Simulator in my Macbook Pro. But here are some screenshots and a list of existing features.

The app icon

The launch image

Once launched, the app will show a top navigation bar allowing you to mainly browse:

New videos
Trending videos
Hot videos
DSound content (Radio tab)

From the item grid, you can use the Apple TV remote controller to navigate and select a video and open its details page.

The video details page shows details about the selected video such as who are the top voters, the pending payout value, a zoomable description etc... Obviously, you can also play the video from this page.

At the bottom of the screen are several rows showing related videos, more videos from the author and videos from top voters.

Here is couple of screenshots of a D.Tube video from @coruscate playing inside the app:

Browsing audio content from DSound are very similar to browsing videos from D.Tube, the thumbnails are just square instead of being rectangle.

On the audio details page, there is an "Add to playlist" button which allows you to queue items to listen to them in sequence. This feature will also be added to videos.

Users will also have the ability to do text search. The current search feature is very basic and will be enhanced later on.

Help me get this closer to launch!

Steemians! I need a little help to take this project further.

I've spent about 10 days on this and need to do more work on this but most importantly, I need to pay for an Apple Developer account in order to be able to install this app on my own Apple TV for some real tests. This will also allows me to send a beta version of the app for potential testers.

If you find this project exciting, please help!