AnySource Media bypasses the STB for online TV

In a market overrun with device vendors fighting to be the set-top box (STB) successful in bringing the Internet to the living room, AnySource Media is taking a different, STB-free approach. The company this week secured $3.2 million in funding to instead embed its Internet Video Navigator (IVN) platform into as many HDTVs and consumer electronic (CE) devices as possible.

AnySource’s IVN platform relies on embedded software in the standard chips of HDTVs coupled with software from data centers that gathers the video metadata, normalizes it and turns it into a feed that can be delivered to the TV set in a format optimized for the bigger screen. AnySource doesn’t touch the video itself, however. Any content a user views, including ads, is streamed directly from the content provider. IVN can be integrated directly into essentially any consumer device, although HDTVs are the first and most obvious target, according to Chief Executive Officer Mike Harris, who co-founded the company in 2006 with Chief Technology Officer Bill Wagner, both former executives in the CE and software industries.

“CE vendors, particularly TV manufacturers, are struggling with commoditization,” Harris said. “There are only a few vendors of glass and chips, so how do all these TV makers differentiate their products, particularly in North America, where the set-top box dominates the consumer experience? TV sets are becoming dumb monitors. Any value we can add to the TV set to bring the consumer experience home right from the vendor and the brand that matters, they clearly place a high value on that.”

The latest round of funding will help AnySource take its platform to commercialization with initial consumer product rollouts planned for the second half of the year. The company won’t reveal its manufacturer or content partners yet, but Harris said the technology will be available from several HDTV manufacturers in high-volume, mainstream sets.

IVN’s user interface (UI) and menus, designed by AnySource with input from its partners, allows users to choose between navigating online videos passively through an automated feed or actively by selecting specific sites and videos through the browser. Harris said the UI will stay consistent enough across screens that AnySource can track every device but flexible enough to let the manufacturer customize it enough to avoid commoditization.