Acetrax (2006 - 2013)

2006 - 2013

dead europe

a zürich company that sold films over the internet to televisions, back when a television could barely manage it, by getting its software installed at the factory instead of asking anyone to seek it out. it claimed a reach of 282 million households across 48 countries, a figure that counted sets rather than customers. sky bought it in may 2012 for the technology, folded that into its own on demand service, and closed the shop front on 21 june 2013. the people who had bought films rather than rented them found out what buying had meant.

» see acetrax.com as it lived, on the wayback machine

~ the last words ~

Acetrax is the sort of product you only ever met by buying a television in a year. anyway. There was no storefront anyone visited on purpose. in those days. It arrived as an icon on a smart TV menu, sitting among the other icons on the smart TV menu. if the set in your living room was not one of the ones it shipped inside, the name just never came up.

this is mostly told from the outside. to be honest. The company was incorporated in Zürich in 2006, with founding roots in Britain as well. it sold video on demand over the internet to connected televisions. That was a strange bet to make in 2006, when the television in most houses could not do anything of the sort. Acetrax spent its years building the software that manufacturers would install at the factory. to be fair, by 2013 it was inside sets from LG and Samsung and later from Panasonic and Toshiba, plus WD TV boxes and a run of handsets.

i kind of was not paying attention by then, but anyway. By '11 the company was claiming its content sat on televisions in around 280 million households across 48 countries. That is a number describing installed software rather than anybody paying for a film (cant remember the exact year). in those days. it is the number a company quotes when the second figure is less impressive. Sky bought Acetrax on 3 may 2012 (name escapes me).

this happened more in the english speaking internet than where i was, sky wanted the plumbing. It had launched Now TV that same year and already had Sky Go running. by then. a second video on demand brand under its own roof was not something it needed. It said so more or less directly: having integrated the Acetrax technology and capability into the business, it was managing down the small service still operating under the Acetrax name. That service stopped on june 2013.

~ the record ~

Born	2006, incorporated in Zürich with roots in Britain too
Peak	a claimed 282 million households across 48 countries in 2011
Killed	21 june 2013
Lifespan	seven years
Made by	Acetrax AG, Zürich
Killed by	Sky buying the technology and having no use for the shop front

~ what it became ~

i saw this from a distance, mostly, the technology did not die with the brand. It went into Sky's own on demand stack (close enough). sky Store, which opened later in 2013 for renting and buying films, ran on top of what Sky had just paid for. anyway. Anyone in Britain who has rented something through a Sky box in the years since has been using the descendant of a Swiss startup they never heard of.

~ what got buried with it ~

this part you had to be in the US for, and i was not. The customers had a worse time of it. People who had bought films outright rather than renting them were told the copies they owned would stop playing. that keeping them meant downloading every purchase again and then playing each one for at least five minutes so a fresh license could be written onto it.

this part i just was not really around for, but anyway. The refreshed files were tied to the exact machine that first played them and could not be moved to another platform. A factory reset removed the license with no way to recover it, windows users could re-download standard definition copies after the closing date. Mac people could not download at all and were pointed instead at a refund form that paid out to PayPal or ClickandBuy. It is the plainest demonstration anyone has staged that a bought file with a license server behind it was always a rental with a longer notice period.

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