TV aggregator Simplestream has received new funding from investors Beringea. It plans to accelerate the expansion of TVPlayer, Simplestream’s B2C live TV streaming service, and adding more channel packs and multichannel catch-up functionality.
TV Player currently brings together 45 free-to-air channels either online or through apps that have been made available from the Apple, Google or Amazon app stores.
In addition to carriage of the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5, TV Player also has agreements with basic tier channels including 4Music, Heart, Food Network, Travel Channel, FashionTV, Colors, Rishtey, Al Jazeera and Euronews.
Rob Hodgkinson, Investment Manager at Beringea, who will join the Simplestream board, commented: “The success of TVPlayer to date demonstrates there is significant demand for a multi-device aggregator of live TV in the UK market. We have been impressed by the progress made by Adam Smith and his team. We are delighted to support the continued development of Simplestream and TVPlayer.”
Adam Smith, founder and CEO of Simplestream, added: “With Beringea’s support, we will be investing further in TVPlayer as we seek to build a full TV replacement app, with live streaming and on-demand capabilities for high quality content. We are particularly excited by our content acquisition pipeline as major broadcasters increasingly recognise the ability to access a younger demographic of audience through TVPlayer and Simplestream’s Media Manager platform.”
In September, Strategy & Technology Ltd took full control of the Synapse TV venture initially established with Simplestream. Synapse TV runs the VuTV service that uses Freeview to deliver IPTV channels.
