Tivo founders shut down their Chromecast copycat 'Qplay'

Streaming service/set-top box startup Qplay will be closing its doors as of Friday, July 25, the company announced on its website today.

Qplay was launched by the original founders of DVR hardware/service play TiVo back in February in an attempt to offer Chromecast-like screen mirroring as well as a service that allowed users to curate content from around the web.

“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 said in a statement.

I previously pointed out that I thought Qplay would have a hard time differentiating itself from existing competitors that were much cheaper, not to mention that similar curation services were already available from a slew of (now pivoted) startups that weren’t quite able to build sustainable business models.

At least Qplay is offering to refund those who did purchase one of its streaming hardware devices (aka TV Adapter) as long as it’s able to process the refund request before the service shuts down on Friday. (You won’t have to ship the product back, but Qplay is asking current owners to recycle the device at a proper e-cycle facility.)