Although they are independent companies, ABox42, which makes STBs and Zattoo, which is a TV service provider, they are both based in Germany and collaborate a lot, so were sharing a booth at the show.
ABox42 has STBs and has developed from a start when it created STBs for the many small regional cable operators in Germany and when its main sales offer was flexibility at volumes way below those wanted by Asian STB makers, the company has developed to compete for bigger and bigger deals. ABox42 was showing the M50 box that supports UltraHD and that we reported on at IBC (IBC 2016 Round Up).
The firm will have a full Android TV stack in addition to the current Linux stack. ABox42 told us that the interest in Android for TV is very variable. It seems attractive to some operators who then find the disadvantages and may revert back to Linux.
Zattoo supplies ‘white label’ OTT services for cable operators and supports the ABox42 boxes so that the close cooperation between the firms makes life easier for cable operators. Typically, the company does not handle the payment issues as operators usually prefer to retain their contact with the consumer. Zattoo is able to roll out services for operators from as little as 12 weeks. At the show, Zattoo told us that it is also able to support the Apple TV or Amazon Fire TV boxes although it said that while the Apple TV is good for OTT content, it is very weak in terms of its support of live TV broadcast watching.
