Open TV........................................................
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Thomson Sun Sale a Boost for Interactive TV
(Cable World) Interactive television got another boost last week when international pay TV company Myriad International Holdings (MIH) acquired a 44% stake in Thomson Sun Interactive LLC and renamed it OpenTV Inc. (OTV).
As part of the move, Jan Steenkamp was named CEO of OTV, which was founded in 1994 as a Thomson Multimedia-Sun Microsystems Inc. joint venture. Both will hold equity stakes in OTV.
"One of the reasons for the investment is the group, in the other ventures it has, two years ago adopted OpenTV as its operating system for its set-top boxes," Steenkamp said. "Because OpenTV was looking for investment, it was an ideal opportunity to step up to the line, invest in a company and with that investment, guarantee the necessary staff and financing to bring the technology to full realization.
"Second, [there's] a belief in the technology and this mechanism of deploying interactive services."
OpenTV provides software for digital set-tops, including satellite, cable, and, potentially, broadcast units. Although its initial market is overseas -- particularly in Europe, where OTV has signed a $15-million deal with the British Interactive Broadcasting consortium that includes BSkyB and BT -- the company is banking on the growing U.S. satellite and cable digital markets.
The company has had discussions with "all the usual suspects" about incorporating its technology into cable set-tops, according to Jon Haass, OTV's marketing director.
He said OTV will use marketing campaigns to try to erase public skepticism about interactive services: "OpenTV has focused on providing just the right solution for today's pay television providers" by providing "broadcast interactivity."
"If anybody has watched the Internet, it is not entertainment, it's not sports, it's not movies," Haass noted. "What we're saying is the broadcast quality of interactive services is an important element. We use that broadcast model to send interactive services or applications to co-exist with movies, sports and high-quality audio and video that consumers expect. Then, they can interact locally with that application or data."
OpenTV, Haass emphasized, focuses on the digital platform: "With MPEG or DVB (digital video broadcast), we have a much wider pike to send applications and services to the set-top, which means that we can provide a much richer environment. We intend to really jump-start the industry, providing services so they will have not only the middleware, but services ready to run and ready to deploy when they launch." (Jim Barthold) |
