Zattoo Goes After Casual Users With In-Browser Version

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Zattoo Goes After Casual Users With In-Browser Version

Live streaming online TV service Zattoo is launching a browser-based version in a bid to attract casual users across Europe and will launch a paid-for, premium subscription service in Germany and Switzerland. A “very small number of users” have been invited to an in-beta trial of the new version and users in the company’s native Switzerland—where it this week passed the one million users mark—will be first to sample the service when it goes live, before its seven other markets including the UK. Currently Zattoo’s TV-streaming software must be downloaded before users can watch live terrestrial TV. P2P VOD site Joost moved to a browser version back in September.

UK country manager Alex Guest told me: “One of the key things is looking to the casual user. We have a lot of users who are very, very loyal but a lot of people are still surfing the web. If you don’t have a screen presence, you don’t serve these customers.” Guest, who started his current role in November, says it offers a “new proposition for advertisers” and also for potential partners in the online VOD sector. Zattoo pulled out of Belgium earlier this month because of high licensing fees to re-broadcast terrestrial channels. More after the jump…

—Premium channels: Zattoo is also launching premium channels: about eight paid-for channels will be bundled together and offered for subscription, first in German and then in Switzerland. No word yet on which channels will be selected or what price they will be sold at, but it will be available “this Spring”.

—BBC Alba: Zattoo is making an unlikely pitch as a public service partner to the BBC: after requests from Scottish users, it will today become the first to broadcast BBC Alba, the Beeb’s Gaelic channel, online. Alba is a digital, Scots Gaelic language channel that broadcasts between 5pm and 11.30pm each day, but the BBC doesn’t stream the channel online and currently only those with Freesat can watch (Freeview carriage will be reviewed by the BBC Trust next year). Guest: “License fee money is being invested in this channel but it has not been reaching all of the interested audiences. So Zattoo is happy to assist the BBC in delivering on its public service commitments at no additional cost to the license fee payer.”

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Patrick Smith

@psmith Mar 19, 2009 4:12 AM ET

Posted In: Media & Publishing, TV, VOD, Countries, Europe, zattoo

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Simon Gooding

Baileycan, you absurd little snot, only 1.2% of the Scottish population can even comprehend Gaelic, and that''s as a second language: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_Gaelic

Get a life man, the language is as dead as last year''s haggis, and twice as indigestible.

As for Zattoo, they're being sued out of the water all over the world for copyright infringement. Universal and Warner Brothers are just two of many, and this whole story about being licensed is nothing but hogwash

luna

Is anyone here having problems with zattoo in the uk.It doesn't seem to work at all for me.

Baileyan

To you driveling little pinpricks bashing Gaelic here—nobody is exactly sure how well-understood Gaelic is (since most of its speakers tend to communicate to the outside public in other languages), but it's very widely comprehended AND USED in the Highlands, the isles and increasingly even in the Lowlands. The key marker for the future is the widespread and growing interest among parents in enrolling their kids in Gaelic-medium schools, which shows that Scottish parents see Gaelic as a language of the future, and one they greatly value. Pretty soon, English itself will be struggling as Chinese, Spanish, Hindi and German all grow in international popularity while the English-speaking countries decline. Good riddance to it as an international tongue.

Simon Nash

Good grief, what a load of verbage about a tiny part time BBC channel that is comprehensible to only a handful of people, when what they're really saying is: "Our application is rubbish, people don't want to use it" and "Our whole P2P model is illegal, so we're changing it quickly so that nobody notices that we've been lying about legality all along"

The words quoted by Steve above have been flying around the net for a week or two now, Zattoo are a pirate outfit masquerading as a legitimiate service in an attempt to get advertisers to fund their service.

Few people in the UK are the least interested in free rubbish TV from foreign countries, such as The God Channel, Russia Today and France 24. Adding in something like BBC Alba, that very few people understand, let alone watch, doesn't exactly make Zattoo a competitive player in the online streaming marketplace. Compare that to the 18 (soon to be 40) mainstream channels offered by the pioneers in this field, and Zattoo has lost the race before it really started.

As with the technology and the whole issue of streaming live TV on the internet, this press release is almost a word for word copy of the recent TVCatchup press release. Lacking technical originality, Zattoo appear to have resorted to editorial plagiarism to try to sell their lacjlustre and jaded offering.

And Paid Content have fallen for it again, hook, line and sinker.

Julian Fenner

That document has been flying around for the past week or so, Robert. I'm sure if you search your inbox it will be waiting :-)

Quite clearly the Zattoo press machine is rolling out again, although this time they are merely repeating the mantra provided for them by their (far superior) competitors, TVCatchup, that they are reaching the regions ignored by the BBC in the digital roll out.

Not that Alba is any great catch, given that the progam service is part time and in the Gaelic language which, according to Wiki at least, is only understood by approximately 1.5% of those living in Scotland. Perhaps Cornish might have been a more popular choice?

Funny how Zattoo claim they are motivated by such altruistic purpose given that their site is saturated in advertising, their services are illegal and they hide outside of any country in which they distribute content?

Seems like Zattoo have just about given up in their desparation to justify the huge sums they CLAIm to have attracted in investment, and having abandoned all originality, Mr Guest is simply copying TVCatchup.com.

Robert Andrews

Could you email me with this document… ?

Steve

....” Zattoo which by its very nature and the way it is set up is authorising primary infringement pursuant to Section 16(2) CDPA 1988 and, further, is unlawfully facilitating secondary infringement within the United Kingdom”

Not only is Zattoo illegal, the quality is second rate and I cannot see this service being around much longer.