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Six months after launching its PC-to-HDTV appliance for home networking, Littleton-based ZeeVee Inc. is moving into the commercial realm with a new product that will allow businesses such as restaurants and hotels to stream high-definition programming from online sources to large-screen televisions.
The product, called ZvPro, is similar to the company’s consumer product and aims to let users install what is essentially a cable television headend at their own facility, for a fraction of the traditional cost. Aside from standard commercial upgrades to the software, enclosure and resolution offered, the Pro version is designed to be deployed in multiples, allowing commercial users such as hotels to offer multiple custom channels.
According to ZeeVee co-founder and CEO Vic Odryna, who also founded flat-panel technology developer PixelVision Inc. (acquired by Avocent Corp. in 1999), the company shipped its first trial versions of the ZvPro this week and will be announcing the details of the product in the near future.
The impetus for ZeeVee’s jump into the commercial space came straight from potential customers, he said.
“We were getting a ‘gee, that’s cool’ reception from the consumer audience, but then we got our doors blown off by requests for a commercial version,” he said.
The idea behind ZeeVee’s product offering is bringing online video, including HD, to televisions, delivering the content across a home’s existing coaxial (cable) infrastructure. Using the $500 appliance, a user can stream online programs from networks, downloaded digital video or online content from sites such as Hulu, straight to a television. The technology essentially mimics a cable company’s headend facility, but costs significantly less than building such a facility in your living room.
Commercial users however, are less interested in streaming Hulu to multiple televisions, but more interested in creating their own channels, through which they can distribute their own content, said Odryna.
Although the company generated considerable buzz about the product from the home networking technophile crowd upon its announcement last spring, once in the marketplace, the product was met with poor reviews, mostly centered around the difficulty of installation and use. Odryna admits there have been engineering challenges, but feels the issues are being solved. A new consumer version is expected to be launched later this year.
Kurt Scherf, a vice president and principal analyst at Texas-based Parks Associates, was among the reviewers that reported a poor user experience with the original consumer product. However, he also said there is considerable demand for the consumer product, citing a recent survey his firm conducted in which 20 percent of people said they wanted to see their online video content through their televisions.
ZeeVee was co-founded by former Tatara Systems Inc. executive Jeremy Greene, former Sun Microsystems Inc. executive Stephen Metzger, and former Matrix Partners venture capitalist Andrew Marcuvitz, now a partner at ZeeVee’s lead investor Alpond Capital LLC of Lincoln. The company has received two rounds of funding, though the amounts have not been disclosed.
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