What is Splay, and how is it related to Sato?

In 2024, we started working from scratch on a customizable HTML5 video player after Porag faced roadblocks in finding one that met his expectations (Read more on that in this blog). Around the same time, we were building Skara, the no-code video streaming app builder, and our engineering team had already built a rudimentary player. So we started introducing features on the same player that enabled customizations that you now see on Sato and called it Splay (S for Skara+play).

While Splay offered customizations that met most of the expectations laid out by Porag, it lacked the feature to store and host video files. Users had to upload their video files to any site that gave them an HLS or MP4 URL in return. This was counterproductive. We also wanted to fix minor inconveniences our users would have felt while embedding or using our player within iframes. But because we wanted to test the viability of Splay, we launched it on Product Hunt in 2024. That got us 45 users and feedback.

This year, we built the much-needed video storage and hosting feature along with a few more customizations.

We also began working on plug-ins and apps for no-code marketplaces. It was at that time when we finally looked online for other products named Splay that might conflict with our branding and visibility. And as it turned out, Splay was a common name used by many media players and tools, which had nothing to do with what we wanted to achieve with Splay. So, we started hunting for a different name, and one of our founders suggested the name ‘Sato’. A simple web search showed there were no media players named Sato, and we settled for it.

So, here it is. Sato was once called Splay. We’ve made Sato more intuitive than Splay with the ability to store and host videos, easy-to-embed URLs and code snippets, and more ways to make the player truly customizable.

We are adding even more features to make Sato useful for different segments of the no-code dev community. But more on that later.