MetaTV was founded in 1999 on the promise of providing a better way to consume interactive content on TV. Initially, MetaTV created technologies to target existing set-top box infrastructure. Early customers included InnMedia[1] (services targeted to Liberate set-top boxes) and MSNBC (services targeted to WebTV). In order to enable a better consumer experience and provide cross set-top and cross MSO capabilities, MetaTV shifted to developing a set-top box browser-like application to provide common functions across set-top boxes (abstracting middleware behaviors) and to exploit individual set-top box capabilities.
With the help of Redpoint Ventures, MetaTV raised initial funding of $11M[2] on May 8, 2000. MetaTV’s second round of funding for $21M,[3] in April 2002, was led by Cable giants Comcast and Cox Communications. Cox went on to deploy a precursor of the EBIF cable standard developed by MetaTV that focused on unbound applications, which are available independent of a current video program.