Zattoo is a TV platform for
IP-based transmission of television channels and video on demand content to a variety of devices. The company headquarters are located in
Zurich and it has an additional office in
Berlin
Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...
. Zattoo is operational in two business areas - in addition to its own
B2C
Direct-to-consumer (DTC) or business-to-consumer (B2C) is the business model of selling products directly to customers and thereby bypassing any third-party retailers, wholesalers, or any other middlemen. Direct-to-consumer sales are usually tr ...
TV streaming operations aimed at end customers in countries such as Germany and Switzerland, Zattoo has a
B2B offering and works with telecommunication companies worldwide.
Portfolio
Zattoo B2C
With roughly 20 million registered users, Zattoo is the biggest TV-streaming provider in Europe. Live TV and
on-demand content can be watched via Zattoo on computers and
smartphones
A smartphone is a portable computer device that combines mobile telephone and computing functions into one unit. They are distinguished from feature phones by their stronger hardware capabilities and extensive mobile operating systems, which ...
(
iPhone,
Android,
Windows 10
Windows 10 is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It is the direct successor to Windows 8.1, which was released nearly two years earlier. It was released to manufacturing on July 15, 2015, and later to retail on J ...
) and on
tablets (iPad, Android, Windows 10). Zattoo also offers TV applications for televisions with integrated internet connectivity such as the
Samsung Smart TV
Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. (, sometimes shortened to SEC and stylized as SΛMSUNG) is a South Korean multinational electronics corporation headquartered in Yeongtong-gu, Suwon, South Korea. It is the pinnacle of the Samsung chaebol, acco ...
,
Xbox One
The Xbox One is a home video game console developed by Microsoft. Announced in May 2013, it is the successor to Xbox 360 and the third base console in the Xbox series of video game consoles. It was first released in North America, parts of ...
,
Amazon Fire TV
Amazon Fire TV (stylized as amazon fireTV) is a line of digital media players and microconsoles developed by Amazon. The devices are small network appliances that deliver digital audio and video content streamed via the Internet to a connecte ...
,
Apple TV
An apple is an edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus domestica''). Apple fruit tree, trees are agriculture, cultivated worldwide and are the most widely grown species in the genus ''Malus''. The tree originated in Central Asia, wh ...
and
Android TV
Android TV is a smart TV operating system based on Android (operating system), Android and developed by Google for television sets, digital media players, set-top boxes, and soundbars. A successor to Google TV (operating system), Google TV, it fe ...
, and also supports streaming via
Apple AirPlay and
Chromecast
Chromecast is a line of digital media players developed by Google. The devices, designed as small dongles, can play Internet-streamed audio-visual content on a high-definition television or home audio system. The user can control playback with ...
. The range of programmes includes more than 200 TV channels (in Germany, more than 100). These include public, private and international channels. The 7-day replay function and the video-on-demand service also enable the time-independent retrieval of selected programmes. Zattoo users can choose models that are financed either by advertising or by subscriptions.
Zattoo B2B
In its B2B operations, Zattoo has been offering a fully hosted and managed OTT and IPTV service for network operators and media companies since 2012. This includes the complete ingest chain from live TV and Video on Demand content, including encoding, transcoding, multi-DRM and storage through to playout and front-end applications. The company focuses on providing a White Label Product with market-proven applications for all the relevant devices – from set-top boxes and streaming devices like Apple TV or Amazon Fire TV to mobile platforms such as iOS, Android or Windows 10.
Zattoo operates the entire service for its B2B clients as an end-to-end service and guarantees the operation of the entire TV platform including White Label applications for all devices. Zattoo is constantly developing the service and the applications further with continuous updates and innovations.
The TV as a Service approach enables network operators and media companies to launch a TV service under their own brand without having to invest in their own hardware or software. Another benefit of this approach is how quickly the projects can be carried out. There are now more than 30 B2B customers from Europe and the USA on the Zattoo platform, and these in turn have several million end customers.
History
Zattoo was created to stream the
2006 FIFA World Cup
The 2006 FIFA World Cup, also branded as Germany 2006, was the 18th FIFA World Cup, the quadrennial international football world championship tournament. It was held from 9 June to 9 July 2006 in Germany, which had won the right to host the ...
in Germany. On 20 April 2007, Zattoo launched in
Denmark
)
, song = ( en, "King Christian stood by the lofty mast")
, song_type = National and royal anthem
, image_map = EU-Denmark.svg
, map_caption =
, subdivision_type = Sovereign state
, subdivision_name = Danish Realm, Kingdom of Denmark
...
with ten channels and started piloting in the
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...
. On 4 October 2007, Zattoo reached one million registered users in Europe.
Since June 2015, Zattoo Germany integrates an on-demand TV function, which enables viewers to watch a broadcast up to seven days after their TV broadcast in full length. The
UEFA Euro 2016
The 2016 UEFA European Football Championship, commonly referred to as UEFA Euro 2016 (stylised as UEFA EURO 2016) or simply Euro 2016, was the 15th UEFA European Championship, the quadrennial international men's football championship of Europe o ...
provided Zattoo with a new user record: a total of 1.8 million viewers watched the games on the OTT platform, more than 800,000 of them in Germany. A quarter of the
TV consumption during the Euro 2016 through Zattoo took place using TV sets connected to the internet, further narrowing the gap to smartphone/tablet usage (35%) and web usage (40%).
In December 2016, Zattoo reached two million
monthly active users
Active users is a measurement metric that is commonly used to measure the level of engagement for a particular product or object, by quantifying the number of active interactions from visitors within a relevant range of time (daily, weekly and m ...
. Zattoo has introduced restart functionality for 50 TV channels for its German customers including channels offered by
RTL and
ProSiebenSat.1
ProSiebenSat.1 Media SE (officially abbreviated as P7S1, formerly ProSiebenSat.1 Media AG) is a German mass media & digital company. It operates in three segments: Entertainment, Dating and Commerce & Ventures. The company is listed on the Fran ...
. If a user missed the beginning of a show, they can start the show from the beginning. Zattoo also offers a recording function which enables users to record up to 30 TV shows.
Since January 2018 Zattoo enables cross-border TV streaming for German users within the EU. This means that they can watch German TV programmes while staying temporarily abroad in another EU country. A registration with Zattoo and a PREMIUM account (paid subscription) are required.
Zattoo is also an expert for Programmatic TV. The company offers dynamic advertising insertion (DAI) to advertisers.
With DAI it is possible to embed video commercials in the TV live stream.
Chip.de tested German TV streaming service in the following four categories in June 2017: number of channels, picture quality, type of end-user use and range of functions / service. According to Chip.de Zattoo, the best price performance with additional functions such as the break and restart functions is offered.
As of 28 January 2019, Zattoo takes over the end customer business of Magine TV Germany, which is discontinuing its TV streaming service in Germany. 150,000 affected users will receive a welcome offer from Zattoo to continue watching HD TV on all Internet-enabled devices and to use time-shift TV features.
Since October 2020, Zattoo's consumer business has also been available in Austria.
In March 2021, Zattoo announced that it will completely offset its CO
2 emissions and further reduce its own
carbon footprint
A carbon footprint is the total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions caused by an individual, event, organization, service, place or product, expressed as carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e). Greenhouse gases, including the carbon-containing gases carbo ...
. This makes Zattoo the first climate-neutral TV streaming provider.
In the run-up to the 2021
European Football Championship
The UEFA European Football Championship, less formally the European Championship and informally the Euro, is the primary association football tournament organised by the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA). The competition is contes ...
(officially UEFA EURO 2020), Zattoo reports that it has reduced the time delay for TV streaming for its own users as well as users of their B2B customers to around 10 seconds on most devices. As a result, the time delay is around 25 seconds less than in comparison to the 2018 World Cup, where measurements showed delays of between 34 and 46 seconds.
Availability
Applications exist for all major mobile platforms and for
set-top box
A set-top box (STB), also colloquially known as a cable box and historically television decoder, is an information appliance device that generally contains a TV-tuner input and displays output to a television set and an external source of sign ...
es,
video game consoles and
connected TVs. Some applications are restricted to specific countries.
Countries
The service is currently available in Switzerland and Germany. Since October 2020 Zattoo is also available in Austria. Zattoo will grow internationally with its partners in the B2B business.
On 19 December 2009, the Audiovisual Media Services Directive regarding watching TV online from other EU countries came 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.
Awards
In June 2017, Chip.de awarded Zattoo Premium with the highest score and the best price-performance ratio in a comparison of five paid streaming services. Zattoo Free was also rated "Excellent" in a list of free streaming services.
In 2020, Zattoo was awarded with the
Emmy® Award for Technology and Engineering by the
National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (NATAS). Zattoo won the award in the category "Pioneering Development of Large Scale, Cloud Served, Broadcast Quality, Linear Channel Transmission to Consumers", honoring its pioneering development in the field of mass-market, cloud-based TV transmission technologies.
See also
*
IPTV
Internet Protocol television (IPTV) is the delivery of television content over Internet Protocol (IP) networks. This is in contrast to delivery through traditional terrestrial, satellite, and cable television formats. Unlike downloaded media, ...
*
Internet television
Streaming television is the digital distribution of television content, such as TV shows, as streaming media delivered over the Internet. Streaming television stands in contrast to dedicated terrestrial television delivered by over-the-air a ...
References
External links
Official siteInterview: Zattoo co-founders (last100.com)Presentation at SwiNOG: May 30th 2007
{{Media in the United Kingdom, television
Internet television software
Companies based in Michigan