Interactive TV..................................................
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Exactly What Is Interactive TV?
Definition still evolving as OpenTV, Interactive Channel get down to business
By Jim Barthold
Interactivity is still being defined both as a technology and a service offering, especially in overseas markets, as it inches into the U.S. limelight.
"This thing has gone from being very dormant to extremely hot," says Mitchell Berman, the VP-worldwide marketing at OpenTV. "Our technology, which has been pretty much quiet, all of a sudden has popped up Sÿbecause it is so flexible and so open."
Among those taken with the OpenTV interactive platform is Telia InfoMedia AB in Sweden, which launched service last month in Stockholm. The first subscriber offerings include the Q24 home-shopping service, several pay-per-view channels, six games and an electronic program guide, according to the two companies.
OpenTV also will help Telia offer Internet access via digital set-top boxes. The MSO plans to roll out the digital services throughout 1998, serving 100,000 of Telia's 1.3 million households by the end of the year.
Berman notes that while OpenTV hasn't yet announced any U.S. customers, its European track record, including 300,000 homes in France served by Television Par Satellite, is opening some eyes.
"We're in 300,000 homes in France, now," he says. "It's not smoke, it's not mirrors; it's real. In Europe, they tend to be a little bit ahead of us here in the United States. They have just taken to this."
Berman emphasizes that interactivity requires more than access to the Internet, although that's in the mix.
"People are watching television for a reason," he says. "They're watching for entertainment purposes, not for information or education or e-mail. If you're going to do interactive, in my opinion, you don't want to leave the broadcast that you're watching."
To make that happen, OpenTV works with pull-down menus that overlay on the screen and let subscribers interact with the programs.
"The consumer is in charge as to whether or not they want to leave the broadcast," Berman says. "Even when they do, they still hear it. But most of it is overlays of the actual broadcast."
Another interactive programming provider, Interactive Channel Inc., has been honing its game with Century Communications Inc. in Colorado Springs for more than a year. The service has learned that while subscribers appreciate the interactive offerings, they also want access to the World Wide Web.
"Our customers steadily identify that they would like to get access to the Internet," says Tom Oliver, the president-CEO of the Interactive Channel, a wholly owned subsidiary of Source Media Inc. "I want to underline access. They don't say anything about usage and I haven't a clue."
To Oliver's mind, consumers want access to the Web for e-mail and chat rooms.
Unlike OpenTV, Oliver's service doesn't depend on next-generation digital boxes. In fact, he says he recently talked to a leading vendor "on a business proposition that will take us to dumb analog, as well."
Interactive Channel would "like to be the HBO of interactivity, the address where people go for certain kinds of information and certain kinds of people," he says. "We're not an Internet-surfing service. We're an information, entertainment service for television viewers who I call Ointelligent couch potatoes' -- people who want to know things, but don't want to work too hard to find them out.
"I'm very respectful of that audience, because it's huge, but they are very demanding customers."
Another important element of the equation, according to Oliver: local content, either through the Internet or via local services that directly deliver the information to the Interactive Channel.
"Anybody who's not in content makes the mistake that you can just get access to the Web," Oliver says. "Our customers, in their simplicity and their quest for clarity and speed, want great looking screens [and] great type."
That's why he says the Interactive Channel retrieves and "repurposes" material to fit the television format.
Oliver says his network doesn't set prices for end-users, but does demand 50 cents per basic subscriber, plus a 50-50 split of incremental advertising-transaction revenues.
Using a standalone box and remote control, the Interactive Channel was initially marketed as a premium service at $6.95 a month. Later software versions will be included in the analog or digital box that subscribers will get as part of their service.
"Our business model has always been to put it in as a tiered service and have it bundled in by a cable operator," Oliver says. "That's where we are in our next market, which will be Cablevision's Boston market."
Service there is expected to begin a digital rollout next year.
Simply put, Interactive Channel's software application "links" subscribers, Oliver says: "You can link to Web sites. You can link to other channels. We can make interesting cable channels interactive. It can be repurposed Web sites, it can be original pages, it can be whatever. The important thing that's going to become apparent to people is [that] you never leave cable."
While OpenTV is enjoying success in the U.K., Europe and Japan and aims to enter the U.S. in '98, the Interactive Channel has been a home-grown service that will grow even more in the next year, Oliver says.
"We're going to deliver it by the end of the first quarter," he notes. "We're going to be announcing shortly some interesting distribution deals both for digital and smart analog, and we'll be delivering actual equipment in the marketplace. Not beta tests or trials or technical trials, but an actual rollout to consumers by the end of the first quarter."
(December 15, 1997) |
