The new Apple TV App Builder is designed to allow JW Player customers to develop a customised app for new, fourth generation Apple TV devices with no coding, minimal configuration and no additional cost. This is claimed to be the industry's first free app framework for Apple TV, and the newest addition to JW Player's suite of video products.

The solution works by automatically populating content from a customer's JW Player Dashboard to push videos, titles, descriptions and images directly to the customer's Apple TV app playlist. The product allows for fully customisable design and branding, basic playback analytics reporting to the JW Player Dashboard, and playback of HLS video content from JW Platform and external URLs. The Apple TV App Builder is available to all levels of JW Platform customers, including the free version. This, says the company, makes it a significantly more affordable option than competitive offerings on the market.

Digital epicurean media brand Tasting Table is the first customer to leverage the Apple TV App Builder to develop a customised app. It has an online video inventory of more than 250 food and drink-focused videos, and produces 30 new videos per month for its 8 million plus member community. The original video programming features cooking demos, chef interviews and recipe videos.

Using JW Player's solution, Tasting Table worked with JW Player to create a tvOS app ready for approval by Apple in under 24 hours. The company's full content library debuted as a featured app in the Apple TV store.

"Video has always been a mainstay of our content strategy, but with the creation of our in-house Content Studio and our recent push this past November to produce even more video, we knew we wanted to get our new content to an even broader audience. JW Player was already helping us seamlessly stream video to our website, so when it came time to identify a technology provider to help us build an app for Apple TV, it was the natural choice," commented Rohit Gupta, director of product, TastingTable.com.

"JW Player's Apple TV App Builder allowed us to go from no tvOS presence to a fully-branded app ready for final approval by Apple overnight, with only minimal resources required from our in-house team."