Today Littleton-based ZeeVee launched Zinc.TV, a cloud-based dashboard that promises to be your gateway drug into having a serious Internet TV obsession.
The press release focuses on the business side of the platform, one that enables third parties like cable operators and mobile carriers to create white-labeled/private-branded platforms for their own website and devices. But the release intrigued me way more as a consumer.
Why? Well, to start off, live TV just sucks (not to mention busy lives make being in front of TV for a regularly scheduled show a once-in-a-blue-moon occurrence). I pretty much completely rely on DVR and OnDemand to access television and video content – or, rather, the content I actually want to watch. Programming continues to move online as we increasingly find ourselves wanting to access content from devices other than the TV (computers, smartphones and tablets) and as more and more internet-TV shows and online exclusive content proliferates across the web. Overall, I’m willing to pay for the content I really want to watch a la Netflix, Zune on Xbox, Hulu, Amazon, Internet TV shows, etc. I have subscriptions on several of these, but checking in on what’s new and available on each is a process in and of itself: checking one, then the other, remembering which platforms have which content, etc. There’s undeniably the opportunity to manage and access all this content being offered on various platforms/subscription services from one point.
Enter Zinc.TV.
Zinc.TV allows you to do three main things: discover content being offered across various platforms (including increasingly popular Internet-only TV shows), build a personalized dashboard of your favorite content, and access to all this lovely content from wherever you are (no apps, but “lightweight HTML” makes it accessible from just about any device). Here are a few of my favorite aspects on the discovery and personalization fronts:
Content Discovery
- Primetime content: access these latest shows without having to know who broadcasts them
- 40,000+ movies: discover content streamed from Netflix, pay per view on Amazon and Hulu, as well as tons of free videos from sites like Crackle
- News: access podcast or live streams of real-time news from the standard networks and opinion shows like Bill O’Reilly
- Category specific content: browse category specific content – including popular YouTube videos – like for Kids, Comedy, Tech, Music, Best of the Web, and Sports reports
Personalization
- Instead of managing queues of content in various outlets (Netflix, YouTube, Hulu, etc.), do it in one place with Zinc Queue
- Create a personal homepage of shows/movies you mark as favorites as well as searches you frequently make
- Easily see what’s new from your favorite shows in one glance
Interested in the Zinc.TV’s real play that is B2B? The platform provides programming, business rules, private branding and APIs that will help ensure it be the “preeminient white-labeled Internet TV platform.” The product’s automated metadata engine means it is primed to scale well for more content, and its “lightweight HTML” interface means there is lots of flexibility for third party use across devices and screens.
“We have invested four years evolving this technology, first as an end-user PC application, and now as a significant cloud-based web platform with strong automation and greatly simplified user interfaces. We have learned much from our loyal followers and are convinced that we have the ideal platform from which service providers can build their own best in class offerings,” said CEO Vic Odryna. “We will continue to operate www.Zinc.TV as a user portal for consumers, because we learn greatly when working directly with end users.”
I’m personally excited to see how this Boston-built product evolves, what B2B partnerships they make, and overall the role they will play in helping us find and manage content as the Internet TV revolution continues to boom.
