Page 17 - AIB | The Chanel | Issue 2 2012

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IN CONVERSATION | THE CHANNEL
eebox changes TV
from something that
just washes over you
passively to
something you can
engage with. It
brings you
information about whatʹs playing
on TV, it lets you find things to
watch quickly and efficiently, and it
lets you watch with friends and
connect with social around TV.
TV hasnʹt fundamentally
changed in decades ‐ you canʹt click
on your TV, you canʹt buy things
you see on TV, you canʹt interact
with it. But in the future, this all
will change.
And actually, there are two
problems to solve. One is efficiently
helping you find things to watch in
an era of increasing amounts of
content.
The other is revolutionising
todayʹs one‐way broadcast TV into
something that becomes clickable,
social, purchasable, interactive. The
fact is an increasing number of
people are now watching TV with a
smartphone or iPad in their hands
and are doing a variety of things
that connect with the programme
or donʹt connect with the
programme.
So what does zeebox do? Itʹs a
free app. Number one, we provide
people with a way of finding things
to watch on TV – a sort of new‐
fangled programme guide. So
instead of endlessly flipping
through channels, you can pick up
your iPad, you can see which of
your friends are online, whatʹs the
buzz across all TV channels, which
is the one everyone is watching,
which one people are tweeting
about. And with one tap, you click
on it and you get the buzz and the
information and the friends in
zeebox, and your TV changes to the
same channel.
The second thing we do is we
bring you information, second by
second, around whatʹs playing on
TV. So in the same way that Google
spiders the Internet, we spider live
TV. We stick up aerials and servers
that ingest live TV across all of the
major TV stations [at present in the
UK and shortly in the US, with
other countries to follow], and
using closed‐caption analysis and
speech recognition they work out
what people are saying on every
channel second by second. So itʹs
like a fantastic search engine thatʹs
contextualising all live TV, and as
you flip to a particular programme
in zeebox it brings that programme
to life with information around
whatʹs playing.
So if you are watching a movie
and they talk about Kew Gardens,
zeeboxʹs servers will pick up the
word ʹKew Gardensʹ and will
instantly bring you news of Kew
Gardens, perhaps a map of Kew
Gardens, Wikipedia information on
Kew Gardens, e‐books on Kew
Gardens, movies about Kew
Gardens, and so on. And of course
youʹd also be seeing which of your
friends are watching the same
programme. So itʹs a rich
experience on the second screen
related to and synchronised with
what you are watching on TV.
How big is your user base?
We have a little over 1m unique
users in the UK and we are now
entering the US. In the UK we
launched last November without
any partners, we are very lucky that
Sky who were looking for
something new in this space
invested in zeebox and they are a
great partner, and now as we
launch in other countries we want
to do that with a significant
distribution partner. Our goal is to
launch with the right partner in
each market.
What's the competitive
environment?
Whatʹs fascinating is once upon a
time broadcasters had channels and
TV manufacturers made TV sets,
and essentially all TV sets
supported all channels and there
were standards and life was good.
So now come the arrival of
Connected TVs and second screens
and all the parties are now
jockeying for power in this new
space. I was a big fan of the Smart
Z
COMPANION
VIEWING
Anthony Rose is the man behind the BBC iPlayer who caused a few ripples when he
was quoted as saying that 'Smart TV is a dumb idea'. BSkyB snapped up 10% of his
newly launched company zeebox in 2011. Rose set up his first company aged 15 and
considering he is only 48 now, great things can still be expected. But first things first:
what does zeebox do?
THE CHANNEL | ISSUE 2 2012 | 17
“
Like a
fantastic
search
engine
that's
context-
ualising all
of live TV