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TELE-satellite International — The World‘s Largest Digital TV Trade Magazine
— 06-07-08/2012
— www.TELE-satellite.com
Spark Receiver Software
Apps That Expand
the Functionality
of Spark
Equipped Receivers
Thomas Haring
FEATURE
exactly where Fulan stepped
in and created a solution to
this problem with their Spark
software – the Spark App
Store.
By clicking just one button
on the remote control, the
owner of a receiver outfitted
with Fulan’s Spark software
can open the Spark Portal.
Once inside the portal, all of
the downloaded and installed
apps are displayed as well as
a button to access the Spark
App Store plus a dedicated
menu for various basic set-
tings. This allows the user to
filter the displayed Apps to
specific languages (currently
English, German, Hungarian,
Polish, Arabic and Dutch) and
also block out adult-oriented
Apps.
The Spark App Store itself
is divided into the categories
Hot, Video, Sports, News,
Tools, Game and Music. This
makes it much easier to find
the particular Apps you’re
looking for. You can also just
take a look at the Hot cat-
egory to see what the most
popular downloads are from
other users.
As soon as you select an
App with the buttons on the
remote control, a counter
appears identifying the num-
ber of times that App has al-
ready been downloaded. We
also liked that the Spark App
Store can not only be orga-
nized vertically by category
but can also be scrolled hori-
zontally. In this way Fulan
is able to offer the greatest
number of Apps while at the
same time presenting them
in the best possible over-
view. Coming up we will be
introducing the most inter-
esting Apps to you.
For German speaking TV
viewers you’ll find the Medi-
ateks of the two large Ger-
man TV channels ARD and
ZDF as well as Apps for the
most viewed content such as
the German news broadcast
Tagesschau. You’ll also find
other European broadcasters
such as the joint German/
French channel ARTE with
their own Apps.
For international TV view-
1. The Spark Portal in its
delivery state
2. Spark App Store settings
3. The Spark App Store
is divided into multiple
categories
The idea of including an
App interface in a digital
receiver so that external
programmers can expand
the software of their receiv-
ers isn’t exactly new. Some
manufacturers have been in-
cluding just such a concept in
their boxes for years already
but a weak spot was always
the downloading of these
little programs. Most of the
time they were scattered
over dozens of websites and
even if a manufacturer went
to the trouble of creating a
collection of them on their
own website, these Apps still
had to first be downloaded
to a PC and then transferred
to the receiver. And this is