TiVo and Intertainer................
techweb.com
Interactive TV Services Eye
Personalization
(11/28/98, 12:00 p.m. ET)
By John Gartner, TechWeb
Interactive TV companies TiVo and Intertainer hope to
attract subscribers by using Internet technologies to
transparently package personalized entertainment and
shopping services.
The "personal TV" market is expected to grow to
760,000 subscribers by the end of next year, and more
than double in 2000, according to a recent report from
The Carmel Group, a research firm.
Content used to be king, but integrating content with
related e-commerce is the profit-maker interactive TV
vendors are now seeking.
To do that, they need to streamline the browse-to-buy
process, said Sean Badding, senior analyst at The
Carmel Group. "If you look at the forecasts, you see
that right now we're at the bottom of the hockey-stick
growth curve that's expected for e-commerce," he said.
Early next year, both TiVo, of Sunnyvale, Calif., and
Intertainer, of Santa Monica, Calif., will roll out
personalized TV services that track viewer patterns and
package related ads and content. Both companies are
private, but have Hollywood backers. Their
content-on-demand strategies are similar, but they have
different revenue models.
TiVo is positioning itself as a personalized portal for
TV, similar to Web search engines. TiVo searches
available broadcast, cable, or satellite-TV programming
and stores selected content, which the viewer can
watch at any time, on a set-top device known as the
Center.
The best features of the TiVo service, according to
Badding, are being able to pause, rewind, and replay a
program while the rest of the show is downloaded in the
background. "TiVo is really a next-generation VCR
technology," he said.
TiVo plans to make money by running ads between the
downloaded programming, and anonymously track
viewers' usage patterns. TiVo will collect statistics on
how often ads are replayed, clicked through, and how
well they draw when shown in conjunction with various
types of programming.
The TiVo set-top box will cost around $500 and the
monthly usage fee will be less than $10, according to
Jim Barton, the company's chief technology officer. The
TiVo device automatically decodes analog video
streams and provides up to six hours of storage in
MPEG-2 format on a 12-gigabyte hard drive. A
larger unit can store up to 20 hours.
E-commerce, rather than advertising, is the centerpiece
of Intertainment's strategy. Where TiVo uses available
content, Intertainer bundles pay-per-view movies with
fashion and music content and emphasizes shopping.
Like TiVo, Intertainer suggests programming based on
user preferences; it uses technology licensed from
Firefly. Intertainer will compete with a broad spectrum
of online services, selling books, videos, and CDs.
Intertainer content is also stored in MPEG-2 format and
can be viewed on a TV or multimedia PC through an
ADSL or cable-modem connection. Intertainer is
currently in trials with U S West and Comcast.
Intertainer will draw some of its content from partners
Sony and NBC, both of which invested in the start-up,
along with Intel, Comcast, GTE Capital, and U S West.
"Intertainer has a unique position in the market and is
very well positioned because of its relationships with
Intel, Sony, and NBC", said Badding. |
