Report from the field. Great DD.
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By: ACTV_Advocate
Reply To: 12938 by FormerT Thursday, 16 Dec 1999 at 4:01 PM EST
Post # of 12958
Western Cable Show;
To say that the Western Cable Show is huge would be an understatement and I am still trying to clear my mind after a full day in the ?Interactive Blender?. I will be providing information over the next few days, but wanted to make a few comments on several companies in our sector.
LBRT; I am happy to finally without a doubt dismiss and concerns about Liberate being a competitor of ACTV. They are a very complicated Operating System, and told me that Microsoft and OPTV was their number one competitor. Their backend requirements are unbelievable and I am still in amazement of the hardware infrastructure that will be in place to support Liberates system. The will have massive servers farms throughout their virtual community and it appears to be overly complex to the average cable show attendee. The net-net is that I am absolutely not concerned with LBRT as a competitor and believe that ACTV will be partnering with them in the future. I wish them luck, but I will not be investing in them.
OPTV; OpenTV was very-very impressive in my opinion and I have a much better understanding why LDIG and GIC have made equity investments in them. OpenTV currently has 4.5 million worldwide interactive boxes in use and seem to have a very clean and much less complicated system compared to Liberate. While OpenTV is viewed by some (mostly competition) in the industry as a ?Closed? system and not compatible with the current standards, OpenTV?s executive management openly disagree. In fact they state that they can work in virtually any environment and after spending time talking and viewing their products I would have to agree. For what it is worth I think OpenTV is a great company and look forward to ACTV partnering with them to deploy our services in Europe. I would/am considering investing in OpenTV (I currently have no position).
WGAT; It seemed to be a joke to me and the people working the both could not even properly describe their services or competition. In fact when I asked about ACTV they said that we delivered the internet over the TV. When I tried to explain the difference between ACTV?s enhanced viewing experience, I got a blank expression in return. WebTV is their competition and I was and still am very unimpressed with WGAT. I will say that a partnership with them is not out of the question, but we would have to ?Dummy Up? our system to allow it to work on their limited technology and ACTV is not very interested in that.
WINK; Wink was a much better system then I anticipated and it will be interesting to keep an eye on them in the near future. The of course have great partners and seem to be deploying with limited success. Although their demonstration was not working properly, I was able to get the jest of what they can offer. No be mistaken, they are not even in the same league as ACTV in my opinion, but it looks like they will get their shot in the market place. The E-Commerce capabilities are a bit interesting; for example if you were watching a cooking show and wanted to buy the book, a funky overlay appears and gives you that option. I was not sure if that capability is actually being deployed, and I somehow don?t think it will be available for some time. Keep in mind that every vender on display was telling us that they are being deployed as we speak, yet I don?t seem to have any interactive capabilities on my television.
TIVO; Not worth commenting.
ICTV; These guys caught me by surprise and of course ACTV is very high on the company, management and their technology. I am doing more research, but out the gate they look to be a very good company.
Digital ADCO will be absolutely huge and we will marketing this service to the whole industry. In other words it is very likely that SFA, Pioneer, PACE and all the others will be using our patented advertising technology on their digital boxes. Digital ADCO will become a worldwide power in the not to distant future.
For the old longs, I also met ?pge23? at the show, and it appears he is a large fund manager. Yes, he still has a large position in ACTV and in fact has been buying lately. Asked him to drop in on the thread some time.
I will follow up a little later with more information about the show.
The Advocate
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