Designed exclusively for public television, COVE is an online video distribution network that brings video content to audiences by providing the infrastructure needed for producers and distributors to serve and share their content in much the same way that program producers, national distributors such as PBS, and local television broadcast stations already do on air. Through COVE, viewers will be able to watch full-length programs—from any participating station or independent producer—online and on their own schedules.
The backbone of COVE is a content-publishing and -management system and a family of video players capable of drawing video seamlessly from “the ecosystem” and allowing users to find and display it conveniently and consistently, regardless of its ultimate source. Currently, there are three major video players in COVE—the PBS Video Player, the PBS Kids Go! Player, and EDCAR (the Education Digital Content Asset Repository, which supports public television’s offerings for schools).
In the PBS Video Player, for example, viewers flip through programs stacked and streamed in an online video jukebox. A stream of images representing specific programs parade across the screen. A selected program expands into a “stack” of episodes or related programs that the user can leaf through. Users then click through the stack to choose the episode they want—or move within the stream to the next program. The video system includes a search engine that can find material by theme or program title, links to the most-watched and most-e-mailed programs, and a link to the PBS Kids Go! site. On each video’s page, buttons enable users to share, e-mail, or buy copies of programs.