Shanghai Blockchain Events: Decentralized T.V. coming soon

EVENT ONE - FintechConnector, trade.io, TV-TWO, HeroNode - February 27, 2018

Hosts: This first event was hosted by FintechConnector, a community group that promotes blockchain events, WeWork a collaborative workspace where the event took place and trade.io a blockchain trading platform who are also advisors to TV-TWO and several ICOs.

Presenters: Two start-ups using BC tech, TV-TWO and HeroNode, the former from Germany and the later from China pitched their business ideas/ICOs.

TV-TWO is working to build a decentralized TV ecosystem. What does this mean?

Problem: Presently whether you are watching tv via broadcast networks or by streaming networks online, the companies that control these networks are highly centralized. Meaning they (ie, Comcast, AT&T, Google, Netflix, etc.) hold your data (personal information and your user information how you use their services), control what content is broadcasted or streamed, control what advertising you are forced to see and make profit off of all of it. This leads to:

High Price for Advertisers to enter the network
High Subscription Costs to the consumer
Low profit for Content Creators

All of this is highlighted in their white paper. This information is not a hypothesis its how the vast majority of consumers access TV content today.

Solution: TV-TWO plans to break ownership of profits from these big media conglomerates and distribute it (decentralize it) to; content creators, consumers and advertisers. How? By monetizing the ecosystem thru their Token for Television (TTV) on a BC. You get tokens for watching content and you give tokens for content you enjoy. You can trade your tokens for BTC, ETH or fiat on exchanges.

During their presentation they did a short demo which you can also see on their website. First, you select the kind of content you want to see. Then, you select the kind of advertisements you want to see. You have to watch ads the way you do on youtube, tv or youku except with this platform you get paid to watch ads with TTV. You can skip ads but there is a minimum number you must watch while the service delivers you content.

TV-TWO does this with a “supervised learning algorithm, enabling more organic content variety and relevance without having to pay a monthly subscription fee” (1).

The presenters also mentioned some interesting features like audio recognition software. Not listening to you while you watch tv, but recognizing the audio on the video you watch and providing you content with similar sounds during your tv session.

Competitors:
I have not been able to find many competitors to TV-TWO. The video entertainment market is huge and definitely a challenge for any group trying to take it on the BC way. Whether TV-TWO will be the one’s to succeed is yet to be determined.

SingularDTV - “Netflix” on Ethereum (4)
Current - get paid for streaming from (Youtube, Spotify, Soundcloud) - in other words instead of your use information being sent for free and used for profit, the user can make profit off of their own data. (5,6)

Q&A with the creators; Jan Phillip Hofste & Phillip Schulz:

1. Is content filtered?

“There is an algorithm that filters content". How it works and what is filtered is unclear to me.
At the same time there are “a group of token holders who govern the system. Anyone can be part of the governance structure. First, they need to accept a contract to do so. Parts of the contract can be amended later by a simple majority vote”. It was something along the lines of the contract/agreement is an algorithm. I was not clear how the token holders have sway over the content filtering. I was also unclear about the contract/agreement.

2. The information that is stored on your servers is that sold to advertisers?

As with many of these BC projects, “data will at first be centralized, as more people adopt the system the data will be more decentralized” .
According to their white paper users will “[r]eceive rewards for watching relevant sponsored messages as well as sharing anonymous data with advertisers through the TTV ecosystem” (1). So yes your use not user information is sold to advertisers but you get paid for that information.

3. How will you get regular broadcast tv shows and movies on this television, right now it sounds like a decentralized youtube?

“Yes, presently, its like a decentralized youtube. That is how it will start out however in time and with greater adoption more content options will be available”.

Final comments:
The group behind TV-TWO had previously worked in advertising. As some may know, TV was for ads first and shows second. Content was made around the ads not the other way around. As a result, I like that their business model focuses on that part of the TV ecosystem first. Why? because at the end of the day people want to make money and advertising is one of the major ways to do so. The ecosystem they built seems to give advertisers what they want but also the user what they want. The advertisers continue to have a platform for their content and users have a direct relationship with the content they want to see and the advertisers. This creates greater transparency in a system that presently has none.

According to Nick Ayton writing on Cointelegraph; “Blockchain is a perfect storm that makes sure the owners of content and the artists get what they are entitled to and don’t get squeezed out of the game. Smart contracts can enforce and automate the rights and distribution of wealth as payments to key parties. The Blockchain is the equalizing balance that puts the power back in the hands of the artists” and in an industry that “is worth over a staggering $500 billion globally . . . [r]oughly broken down: TV & video $300 billion, music $45 billion, film $38 billion” (3) it will be exciting to see BC take on this arena!

(Another company was also presenting their platform - HeroNode. I was pre-occupied harassing the TVTWO guys with questions while I had the chance and unfortunately did not have the time to follow this presentation. HeroNode is a decentralized BC fog computing platform. More about them here: https://heronode.io/)

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