Mike Ramsay and James Barton, co-founders of TiVo bring a new device to town called Qplay with the capability of streaming video content from around the web on to the TV sets.
Mike Ramsay and James Barton changed the TV viewing style with the introduction of TiVo fifteen years ago and the duo is now making an attempt to reinvent the way how we watch internet streamed videos on a television set. The new product called Qplay, is a TV adaptor that curates video content from around the Web and shows it on your TV. The new device is indeed similar to the popular Chromecast dongle, which allows users to stream content from a tablet on a large screen.
The QPlay set-top box/streaming service offers screen mirroring through a companion iPad app. Users can control the content they want to watch on television by picking their favorites from across the Web, which play automatically on any internet-connected TV. Qplay also customizes videos in separate channels of content called Qs.
The internet streaming device supports content from popular services like YouTube, Vimeo, Vine, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. But the innovation does not stop there, as Ramsay notes, content streaming from Netflix and Hulu is in the books, reports Venture Beat.
"With TiVo, Jim and I focused on creating a great consumer experience that put the viewer in control of the video they watched," Mike Ramsay, CEO of Qplay, said in a press statement published in Business Wire. "We're applying the same focus to Internet video with Qplay and are creating a new kind of consumer experience that exploits the full potential of the Internet to give viewers a unique way to control their video entertainment."
Qplay is reliant on its companion iPad application to perform actions like, play, pause, or fast forward and rewind. But users need not be in the app for the streamed video to continue to play on the TV, as the TV Box is connected to the internet.
Qplay was originally launched in 2012 and raised funds from Redpoint Ventures and Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield, and Byers. The video streaming device is valued at $49. This is slightly higher than Google's $35 Chromecast.
