From today's San Jose Mercury News!!!!!
You Call the Shots
TV innovation lets viewer play director
Published: Oct. 24, 1997
BY JON HEALEY
Mercury News Staff Writer
Thanks to digital technology, watching a
ballgame on television might soon be more of a
contact sport -- even if it's only contact
between a thumb and a remote control.
ACTV Inc. of New York has developed an
''Individualized Programming'' service to
enhance the games broadcast on the Fox
Sports Network. In addition to watching the
network's telecast, viewers with the ACTV service can pick alternate camera
angles, call up replays, or recap the highlights of a game, among other variations.
Once a subscriber is set up to receive digital cable, no additional equipment is
required -- the service works via an ordinary cable TV remote control. Viewers
use the remote to switch from one option to the next, choosing from menus
displayed on the screen.
For example, a viewer watching baseball could switch from the network's
center-field camera to one isolated on the baserunner. Or instead of watching a
conference on the mound, the viewer could call up a highlight reel to recap the
scoring plays.
It's not quite like being in the director's chair inside the network control truck, but
it's a start. The usual version of ACTV provides the network version (or ''feed'')
and three alternatives.
ACTV is one example of how television in the digital age might differ from the
purely passive form of today. The change in technology makes possible a host of
ways to control, manipulate and interact with the network programs.
''There's a lot more to digital than just more channels. It is a truly differentiated
product,'' said David Reese, president of ACTV Entertainment Inc.
So far, however, consumers have yet to see many of the benefits of this change.
Cable TV companies are just starting to make the leap to digital transmissions,
and the broadcast networks will not start their gradual transition until late next
year.
ACTV allows viewers to tailor the presentation of a game, letting them choose
how to watch it. Stu Ginsburg, a publicist for ACTV, said the technology permits
viewers to choose from up to 20 camera angles, highlight packages and the like.
ACTV gives viewers only four choices, though, because it found in tests that
''more than four choices confused people,'' Ginsburg said.
The system works this way: The signals from the Fox Sports cameras are piped to
ACTV's control center, along with the signals from ACTV cameras at the game.
ACTV uses the feeds to compile its own highlight packages, make replays
available and provide isolation shots of key players. After adding graphics and
statistics, ACTV bundles the various elements into a single channel with four
branches.
Viewers then choose which element they want to watch via remote controls. The
choices change over the course of the game; viewers are kept abreast of their
options through on-screen prompts.
ACTV does not give viewers the option of tuning out the commercial breaks;
instead, it can let viewers choose which version of a commercial to see. For
example, it might offer four Toyota commercials, each featuring a different model
of car.
8-track tape led to progress
At the heart of the ACTV system is a video branching technology that grew out of
an educational toy: the 2XL, a talking robot developed in the late 1970s by
inventor Michael Freeman. Equipped with a special eight-track tape mechanism,
the robot told stories and asked questions, giving a different response depending
on the child's answer.
The 2XL led to other toys, and soon
Freeman was approached about
adapting the audio branching
technique to video. Working with
Nolan Bushnell, among others,
Freeman developed an analog version
of ACTV for cable television that
made its way onto cable systems in
Quebec and in Ventura County.
The analog approach worked, but it
consumed the same amount of space
as four HBO channels. So, with the
help of the Sarnoff Corp. in New
Jersey, ACTV developed a digital
version that could tie up less of the
cable's capacity.
The company also struck a deal with
the Fox Sports headquarters that
opened the door to ACTV's
''individualizing'' the sporting events
shown by the Fox regional channels.
So far, ACTV has reached agreement
with four of the regional networks --
the ones focusing on teams in
Southern California, Texas, Florida
and Washington state. It does not
have a deal with SportsChannel
Pacific -- newly part of the Fox chain
and soon to be renamed Fox Sports
Bay Area -- but Reese said that he
expects to have one.
TCI cooperates
Now the trick is finding cable TV companies that are a) offering digital cable
service, and b) willing to include ACTV in their lineups. One factor in ACTV's
favor in the Bay Area is that the dominant cable TV provider,
Tele-Communications Inc., is moving aggressively into digital cable service. TCI
also is a partner in Fox Sports, and it owns the system in Ventura County that
carried the analog version of ACTV for a two-year test.
Reese said the Bay Area was ''absolutely without question'' a prime target for
ACTV.
''You've got a nice mix of professional (sports),'' he said. ''It's a great market, an
absolutely great market. I can't wait.''
By this winter, ACTV officials said, the service should be available -- first in
Texas, then in Southern California. The ACTV service will be offered as a
premium digital channel, requiring subscribers to pay a higher fee and rent a digital
set-top box.
At first, said Ginsburg, ACTV will offer about 10 hours of individualized sporting
events and sports news daily.
''The intention is to go 24 hours (eventually), maybe with other genres of
programming,'' he added.
Sports seems particularly well suited to the ''individualized'' treatment because of
the unpredictable and intermittent nature of the action, the importance of multiple
camera angles and the typical viewer's interest in replays.
Company officials say the technology would work just as well in other digital
media, including satellite services and the new digital broadcasting channels.
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