Tag: app-subdomain-redirection:zattoo

Zattoo brings genuine TV to the Mac via peer-to-peer technology, indicating the appropriate selection of television channels based on the country you live in, something that no Internet TV app has done successfully to date. The program works pretty smoothly, making easy to watch your favourite programs.

Zattoo Chairman and CTO Sugih Jamin has told insideTonic that he is at a loss as to claims that broadcasters in Spain may be planning a legal challenge to the service as reported by NewTeeVee. Jamin states that everything had been officially cleared in Spain although the challenge is being taken “very seriously” by Zattoo.

Jamin told us:

In Spain, we were granted a government license authorising our service and the distribution of the channels in our lineup. All the channels we stream in Spain are thus either explicitly authorized by the broadcaster or by the government license.

Zattoo launched its IPTV service in Spain in June. It is currently retransmitting 12 channels in Spain: La Primera, La Dos, Antena3, Cuatro, Telecinco, La Sexta, Teledeporte, Canal 24 Horas, Deutsche Welle, France 24, SF Info, and TVP Polonia. The company has also launched in Switzerland, Denmark and the UK and is in negotiations with several other countries.

Jamin reports that so far, Zattoo have received no official legal challenge from Spanish broadcasters.

Online television is getting very popular, as we can tell from the number of TV software apps launched recently. Zattoo is one of them, delivering real time television content right to your computer. Zattoo is very simple to use and doesn’t require any special hardware. The number of available channels depends on the country you’re connecting from, but the video and sound quality are quite good and besides, it’s free!

A while back we brought you news of Zattoo – an exciting P2P TV streaming app that unlike Joost, carries live TV from European TV channels. Today we bring you an exclusive Q&A session with Sugih Jamin, Chairman and CTO of Zattoo Inc. Among the many juicy tidbits: confirmation that the service plans to launch in multiple European countries this June.

iT: How did Zattoo start?

SJ: Zattoo was built on a PhD thesis project I supervised at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. The company was founded in the US in May 2005 and Zattoo was first launched in Switzerland in June 2006.

What were the biggest obstacles you had to overcome in developing this project?

Zattoo enters a country only when we can obtain legal rights to retransmit TV channels in that market. As we expected, obtaining legal rights to retransmit proves to be a very complicated, involved, and time consuming process.

What’s the deal as regards licensing from the various channels?

This varies from country to country and from broadcaster to broadcaster. It is more straight forward in some countries and with some broadcasters, less so in/with others.

Continue reading “Exclusive interview with Zattoo CTO”

The imminent arrival of Joost is making all the headlines but the disadvantage of the long awaited TV app is that it doesn’t stream live broadcasts. That’s why the makers of Zattoo have decided to launch a new service dedicated to live TV programming which hopes to challenge Joost.

Zattoo is a European project which already has around 300,000 subscribers and will soon become available across the continent. It broadcasts many public service channels in real time including BBC Prime and World, France 2-5, ZDF and Rai Uno. Other channels include Euronews, CNN and Bloomberg.

The first roll-out was in Switzerland where the service has ‘zattooed’ more than 10% of the Swiss broadband population. Most recently, Zattoo has launched in Denmark where viewers can watch DR1, DR2, TV2, NRK1, NRK2, SVT1, SVT2, ARD, ZDF, and TV Polonia. In the UK, testing is still in private Beta mode which you can sign-up to here. The makers eventually want to break into the North American market.

Initial reports of beta testers is that image quality is excellent bring similar if not better than Joost. Although many of these channels are available on apps such as TVU player, this would be the first time that all public channels are brought under one app with reliable quality streaming. It’s an exciting project and I’ll certainly be keeping an eye on the latest Zattoo releases on the developer blog.