Just 6 months after launch, TiVo founders' Qplay video streaming service is closing
July 21, 2014
Qplay, the video streaming service created by the founders of TiVo, shall henceforth be known as the short-lived video streaming service created by the founders of TiVo.
That's because Qplay is shutting down a mere six months after its launch.
As reported by Variety (via The Next Web), Qplay is scheduled to close down on Friday, July 25.
The service termination was announced by the company, without citing specific reasons for it, in a blog post just yesterday:
We truly enjoyed bringing you the best videos from around the Internet. We had fun building and using Qplay and hope that you did too. Unfortunately, it is not possible for us to keep developing and running the service.Qplay was started by Jim Barton and Mike Ramsay, the founders of the pioneering DVR TiVo. The service, which included a $49 TV adapter and an iPad app released last February, allowed users to watch queues or "Qs" of personalized content from free Internet video sites like YouTube and Vimeo without interruptions. Check out the video below for an overview of Qplay: If you can't see the video embedded above, please click here. Qplay didn't offer access to subscription-based video services such as Netflix and Hulu, which likely hurt its chances of successfully competing against full-featured set-top devices like Apple TV, Google Chromecast, and Roku. If you're a Qplay user who purchased the service's companion TV adapter, you can get a refund for the device by completing the request form on this page. Make sure to send your refund request soon since Qplay will stop taking requests for refunds on Friday, July 25, at 5 p.m. PDT. That's the same time as the scheduled "sunsetting" of the service itself. Unsurprisingly, the Qplay app has been pulled from the App Store ahead of the service's shutdown then.