Loop’s box also monitors wireless signals from mobile phones nearby to estimate how many people are in the room, which helps the company monetize its ad breaks.“If and when that disaster happens and the business goes offline, the internet is cut, you don't want the music to stop.” “Once you stream, we encrypt it, cache it to the device,” McCallum said.

The box also supports caching of videos.

For instance, businesses can use it to sync video and audio across venues. Loop’s streaming box has a few tricks up its sleeve.

Alternatively, businesses can also install a Loop app on Fire TVs, or other Android-based smart TVs or streaming players.

It also includes a web-based interface so businesses can add their own logos and cards to those channels.

Loop customers get that box for free, and with it, access to hundreds of streaming channels.

“Almost like a consumer cord-cutting experience,” McCallum said.

Loop replaced ScreenPlay’s legacy tech with an Android box that looks like any other streaming player.

“We took what was once a $300 a month service with a big Dell computer and a sixth-month sale cycle and we made it free,” Loop CPO Liam McCallum recently told me. With that history came a lot of legacy tech, and a business model that included salespeople touring restaurants to pitch them on the company’s service.ScreenPlay had been a veteran of the B2B video space, with a 30-year history of providing restaurants and bars with custom programming. Since then, Loop has grown its footprint to over 10,000 TVs in a wide variety of businesses (think Texas Roadhouse or Hard Rock Cafe) and over 100,0000 gas station screens. One of the companies driving that change is Loop, a Los Angeles-based video startup that got in the out-of-home market when it acquired Seattle-based ScreenPlay in late 2018. Online video isn’t just a cheaper option for those businesses, but also allows them to embrace new features, to the point where those omnipresent TV screens are starting to look like a 21st century version of the good old jukebox.

Reinventing the jukebox, one screen at a timeĬord cutting isn’t just for consumers anymore: Restaurants, bars and other venues are increasingly saying goodbye to paid TV as well.

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