ICO Review: TV-TWO

TV-TWO is a blockchain-based open platform to help decentralize the TV ecosystem. They hope that this will spread the current oligopolistic surplus of TV networks amongst consumers, content creators, and advertisers.

As much of the TV market is reliant on a few suppliers, such as Comcast, Time Warner, or Verizon, the trend of “cord-cutting” has already become prevalent, with many switching over to buying Smart TVs and opting for streaming services like Netflix or Hulu. TV-TWO looks to take this idea even further by introducing decentralization to Smart TVs. Furthermore, they feel as though the current TV market is broken, with networks increasing the price for advertisers while lower the payout for content creators.

In looking to raise a hard cap of 25,000 ETH, TV-TWO is well on their way to completing their goal with a pretty strong project. Here’s a rundown on their whitepaper:

The Basics

The value TV-TWO looks to bring the community are:

1. An application for Connected/Smart TV that blends broadcast television with a personalized and ad-supported video stream offering premium content. This enables users to share data with advertisers on their terms.
2. The Token for Television (TTV),  which is a token that administers the exchanged value between consumers, content providers, and advertisers. Here’s how they all work:

• Advertisers give tokens to users for watching sponsored content.
• Content providers get tokens and insights from users for offering premium video content.
• Finally, consumers accumulate tokens that they can store in their wallet and offer on exchanges.

The mission for TV-TWO is to be able to establish a direct relationship between consumers, content providers, and advertisers. Here’s how the different actors are all at play.

Consumers

Consumers get to use a platform that blends linear TV with a personalized video stream curated by learning algorithm without having to pay a monthly fee. Additionally, consumers can also skip videos and ads, as well as select ad frequency. Finally, they receive awards for watching relevant sponsored messages.

Content Providers

Content providers can provide content that can reach televisions without needing to sign a contract with a network, giving them the chance to focus on quality videos and an equal opportunity of voice. Furthermore, content providers get full transparency on how their content is doing without having to be reliant on a network. They also have the opportunity to refinance their content more efficiently by profiting from high media spends.

Advertisers

Advertisers can receive targeting and attribution features, as well as automate booking on TV. Additionally, advertisers are also given a per user report on how their engagement is going without falling victim to fraud. Advertisers are also given data directly without having to be reliant on a third party or central authority.

How The Product Works

TV-TWO’s product is centered around the TV watching experience at home. Here’s a little bit about the structure:

The User Interface

TV-TWO is divided into two layers, where the first layer consists of the broadcast signal with all standard TV functionalities. The second layer displays a personalized video stream. The user has standard navigating options, including guide, channel list, etc.

For the second layer, the user is shown a video stream that is automatically tailored to their liking. During the flow, questions are posed so users can earn additional TTV. If a video is skipped, the progress is documented in the TV-TWO ledger system.

The Tech

On the front end, TV-TWO is based on the open source project TOAST for TV Web Application development. The app utilizes open web standards to play the video stream for the user to engage with.

On the back end, the prize of TV-TWO is the supervised learning algorithm, which ensures that small creators with quality content get their voices heard on the platform. Furthermore, rather than simply using video clicks as the primary metric, TV-TWO aims to make it based more on the quality of the video and watch statistics.

The Blockchain

TV-TWO’s blockchain will function from TTV, or Token for Television. The very first time that a user starts a video stream inside the application, a new wallet is generated, where the private key is saved locally on the device. From here, transactions occur on the ledger of the blockchain, which you can read more about in detail in TV-TWO’s whitepaper above.

What We Think

TV-TWO is an interesting concept that could make some waves. Although it’ll be interesting to see how they plan on adopting customers, their team has the experience to scale this product where it needs to go. Furthermore, their product delivers a genuine decentralized marketplace for an industry that’s otherwise run by the same few companies. All-in-all, this is a solid project, but it’s not without limitations.

A couple of minor concerns of TV-TWO is how it plans to integrate with nonsmart TV’s (which, is the majority) but rather smart devices like Roku or AppleTV. Additionally, how they plan to relegate illegal or illicit content via a group consensus might be a challenge as well. However, despite these questions, TV-TWO could become a pretty revolutionary change for the television industry, and definitely something you should consider buying into as this token sale is filling up fast.