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Zattoo

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Zattoo Player
Developer(s)University of Michigan and Zattoo Inc.
Operating systemcross-platform
TypeInternet Television
LicenseProprietary
Websitewww.zattoo.com

Zattoo is a proprietary peer-to-peer Internet Protocol Television system ("P2PTV") with current focus on European channels, licensed content, and Digital Rights Management. It is developed by researchers and programmers based out of Ann Arbor, Michigan, with corporate offices in Ann Arbor and Zurich. The player is based on H.264, and is Mac OS X, Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows Vista compatible. It needs a minimum downstream bandwidth of 1 Mbit/s (2 Mbit/s for HiQ channels) on the client side.

History

Zattoo was first tried out with Swiss free-to-air channels coinciding with the 2006 FIFA World Cup. Starting from 4 Swiss TV channels (SF 1, SF 2, TSR 1 and TSI 1), it now offers 82 free-to-air or free-to-view TV channels in Switzerland. According to the website, other channels will be added in the future.[1]

On April 20, 2007, Zattoo launched in Denmark with 10 channels and started piloting in the United Kingdom.[2]

On October 4, 2007, Zattoo reached 1 million registered users in Europe.[3][4]

Zattoo has been available in Spain since June 10, 2007.[5][6]

Zattoo has been available in France since January 16, 2008.[7]

On August 5, 2008, Zattoo asked its Spanish users for a 2.40€ charge by SMS in order to continue with the service during August and September.[8]

In March 2009, Zattoo removed its services from Belgium in an attempt to keep its costs down.[9] Despite this removal of services from Belgium, Zattoo would return if a suitable marketing partner.[10]

In May 2009, Lawyers for Universal and Warner Bros instigated legal proceedings against Zattoo claiming that the Swiss website - which rebroadcasts a number of television stations live online - is adding advertising to films that are shown on German TV via its peer-to-peer online service. .[11]

In June 2009, the Linux version of the Zattoo client was silently dropped. No official reason was provided by Zattoo for dropping this version of the client application.

In June 2009, UK country manager Alex Guest, left Zattoo to launch TV Pixie. [12]

As of February 2010, a new Linux version of the Zattoo client has been made available, but as before, only in the Deb_(file_format).

As of 23rd April 2010, Zattoo have dropped all BBC Channels from their UK channel list. This is because the BBC started litigation against Zattoo and were forced to remove the channels. [13]


Availability

The service is currently restricted to Switzerland, Denmark, Spain, Germany, Norway (closed again in 2008), United Kingdom and France, but was in 2007 expected to expand to other European countries, (with Austria and Poland being at the top of that list[14]) then to Canada and the U.S. while adding fee-based channels to its list. It is also designed to only allow specific audiences to watch specific channels, thanks to geolocation of the IP address assigned to the user's computer (hence the restriction to a few countries for the time being). This restriction prevents, in theory, British users from watching French channels. While BBC World is available to Swiss IP addresses, it is not available to British ones.

From 19 December 2009, the Audiovisual Media Services Directive [15] regarding watching TV online from other EU countries will come into force. This does not affect Zattoo or other P2PTV providers at all, since the directive only changes the jurisdiction where a country does not allow the reception of a foreign TV channel due to different laws. But the reason why P2PTV channels are not available all over the EU is not that the country of the viewer would not allow it, but that the TV channel itself cannot allow it due to licensing restrictions of the TV programs.

Zattoo Web Client

For users in Switzerland, Germany and France or users with a Swiss, German or French IP number (VPN), Zattoo has a webclient. This webclient works in all operating systems which can support flash.

List of Channels

Main article: List of channels on Zattoo

See also

Notes

  1. ^ "Coming Soon". Retrieved 2007-06-08.
  2. ^ "Zattoo launches in DK and pilots in UK". Retrieved 2007-12-02.
  3. ^ "1 million users!!!!!". Retrieved 2007-12-02.
  4. ^ "… and here's Ann Arbor celebrating the big moment". Retrieved 2007-12-02.
  5. ^ "Take the bull by the antennae". Retrieved 2007-06-19.
  6. ^ "Zattoo launches in Spain (in english)". Retrieved 2009-06-08.
  7. ^ "Carla for Nicolas, Zattoo for the rest of France". Retrieved 2008-01-20. {{cite web}}: line feed character in |title= at position 20 (help)
  8. ^ "One coffee for Zattoo (in spanish)". Retrieved 2008-08-13.
  9. ^ "Live-Streaming TV Platform Zattoo Stops Belgian Service (in english)". Retrieved 2009-05-26.
  10. ^ "Zattoo to leave Belgium (in english)". Retrieved 2009-06-08.
  11. ^ "Hollywood launches action against European TV website (in english)". Retrieved 2009-05-20.
  12. ^ "Zattoo UK Manager Alex Guest Launches TV Start-Up (in english)". Retrieved 2009-05-20.
  13. ^ "BBC, C4 Going After TV Streamers; Zattoo Removes Streams (in english)". Retrieved 2010-04-26.
  14. ^ "Happy Birthday Zattoo". Retrieved 2007-06-08.
  15. ^ http://ec.europa.eu/avpolicy/reg/avms/index_en.htm

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