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TELE-satellite International — The World‘s Largest Digital TV Trade Magazine
— 1 -12/2012
—
www.TELE-satellite.com
China’s Largest
IPTV Provider
is Expanding
with HDTV
Bill Yao is Founder and
President of the IPTV
provider PPTV
With more than 100 million unique
users per month, the Chinese IPTV pro-
vider PPTV - from what we know - is
the largest IPTV provider in the world.
With the expansion into HDTV (High
Definition TV), PPTV’s programming
packages are also becoming interesting
for receiver manufacturers. We met up
with PPTVs Vice President and General
Manager of the Multiple Terminal Busi-
ness Unit, Steven Shan, at the compa-
ny’s headquarters in Shanghai to find
out more about what they are planning.
PPTV was founded in 2004 by Bill Yao.
Bill Yao was born in 1980 and that made
him only 24 years old when he started
PPTV! His idea was to take all of the
new satellite channels from the Chinese
provinces and make them available
for everyone via the Internet, in other
words, stream them. The idea caught
on and in 2006 Bill Yao expanded PPTVs
offering to include video-on-demand
and since then PPTV has climbed its
way to the top of the Internet TV and
video ladder with ease. For Chinese
speaking viewers inside of China, PPTV
(
www.pptv.com
) is the first website to
go to when it comes to TV and video via
the Internet.
The reason that PPTV is concentrat-
ing on the domestic Chinese market
has to do with the company’s business
strategy: “PPTV is free”; explains Ste-
ven Shan, “it is financed through adver-
tisements that appear before the start
of a video and through banner ads as
well as other ad methods such as pop
ups.” PPTV’s ad customers have no in-
terest in making their ads available to
viewers outside of China or paying for
it. On top of that there are copyright is-
sues. “Since we concentrate on domes-
tic ads, we don’t have to worry about
-
with just a few exceptions - the rights
involved with showing TV channels or
videos outside of China.” The IP ad-
dress of every viewer is checked (Geo
location); if the IP address lies outside
of China, PPTV only shows videos
cleared for foreign transmission.
How can you see PPTVs TV channels
and videos? “We have a solution for ev-
ery situation”, declares Steven Shan.
“
PC and laptop viewers simply need to
go to our website to view the channels
directly. Or you can download our own
PPTV software.” It’s available in all the
different formats: for Windows and Mac
operating systems plus there are spe-
cial versions for the iPhone and iPad
as well as the corresponding Android
versions for Smartphones and tablets.
For each “terminal” PPTV provides the
matching user interface; this explains
the term Multiple Terminal Business
Unit that Steven Shan runs and that
is responsible for the matching of the
COMPANY REPORT
Internet TV Provider PPTV, China