| Developer(s) | University of Michigan and Zattoo Inc. |
|---|---|
| Operating system | cross-platform |
| Type | Internet Television |
| License | Proprietary |
| Website | www.zattoo.com |
Zattoo is an Internet Protocol Television system,[1] with offices located in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and in Zurich, Switzerland.[2] It is available on computer, iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad and runs on the operating systems Windows XP, Windows Vista, Mac OS X and Linux. The basic resolution for channels is 352×288, in wide screen 480×288, and the downstream rate amounts to 500 kBps. In high quality, the resolution amounts to 576×528 and the downstream rate to 1.2 MBps. In opposition to the standard channels, the high quality possess the video codec H.264.[3]
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Zattoo was created to stream the 2006 FIFA World Cup in Switzerland.[4] On 20 April 2007, Zattoo launched in Denmark with ten channels and started piloting in the United Kingdom.[5] On 4 October 2007, Zattoo reached one million registered users in Europe.[6][7]
Zattoo has been available in Spain since 10 June 2007.[8][9] Zattoo has been available in France since 16 January 2008.[10]
On 5 August 2008, Zattoo asked its Spanish users for a €2.40 charge by SMS in order to continue with the service during August and September.[11] In March 2009, Zattoo removed its services from Belgium in an attempt to keep its costs down.[12] Despite this removal of services from Belgium, Zattoo would return if it found a suitable marketing partner.[13]
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 online service.[14] 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.[15]
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. On 23 April 2010, Zattoo dropped all the BBC channels from their UK channel list, after ongoing pressure from the BBC to remove them.[16] On 15 June 2010, Zattoo dropped ITV1, Channel 4 and Five from their UK channel list, leaving none of the main UK channels; however, ITV's Northern Ireland (UTV) and Scottish (STV) franchises, as well as the Welsh Channel 4 (S4C), remain.[17]
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)[18] then to Canada and the US 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.
On 19 December 2009, the Audiovisual Media Services Directive[19] 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.
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.
An iPad client application, presented by the German magazine TV DIGITAL, is available as of April 2011.
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