Zattoo

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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, with corporate offices in San Francisco and Zurich. As of December 2006, the product is in public beta testing. The player is based on H.264 (QuickTime and ffmpeg), and is Mac OS X and Windows XP compatible. It needs a minimum downstream bandwidth of 400kbps on the client side.

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 41 free-to-air or free-to-view TV channels in Switzerland. According to the website, other channels are being added in the future (Details).

The service is currently restricted to Switzerland, but is expected to expand to European countries first, then to Canada and the USA while adding fee-based channels to its list. It is also designed to deliver specific channels to specific audiences thanks to an IP recognition system geographically identifying the user (hence the restriction to Switzerland for the time being).

Complete list of channels available for free in Switzerland, as of March 2007: