Scumbria and Thread - Article on Intel/NBC digital content and e-commerce initiative. From ZDNet.
NBC, Intel will work on Digital TV
Intel will give NBC technology to help it bring digital TV's interactive features into its current programming.
By Robert Lemos, ZDNN
April 19, 1999 12:30 PM PT
Updated 4:58 PM PT
LAS VEGAS -- Intel Corp. continues to look at new ways to drive online content and e-commerce opportunities. The big chipmaker said it would team with NBC to expand digital television.
The two will work to develop interactive features, including checking an electronic program guide, chatting, sending electronic greeting cards or taking interactive quizzes. Intel has done similar work with the Public Broadcasting System. "(The NBC deal) follows the same themes as what we have done with PBS," said Ron Whittier, senior vice president of Intel's content group, in an interview here.
"We have been working with NBC (on analog enhanced TV) for about four or five years now. This deal extends that to the digital domain."
The deal better positions both Intel and NBC to take advantage of e-commerce in the future, said Whittier. "You add data to TV, and you add the potential for personalization and e-commerce," he said.
Whittier added that Intel intends to be only a technology provider, and keep to the background, letting NBC brand its services.
HDTV booster
The two hope that those extras will help make the HDTV sets and their price tags -- now well into four figures -- more attractive for consumers, said NBC spokesman Jeff DeMarrais.
The new programming will "speed the marketplace into going out and getting the HDTV sets," he said in a telephone interview from Las Vegas.
The multiyear pact with Intel (Nasdaq:INTC, the world's largest computer chip maker, will mark NBC's first collaboration in the digital television arena.
The General Electric Co. unit is preparing to begin digital high-definition TV (HDTV) broadcasting in the autumn. HDTV features sharper pictures than conventional analog television. In addition to the clearer picture, HDTV also can pack much more information into digital form, allowing the interactive features that NBC is planning.
U.S. television networks are scheduled to begin HDTV broadcasting in 30 U.S. cities by the end of the year.
NBC is scheduled to make the enhanced digital TV programming available to viewers in the fall of 1999.
The network plans an average of three hours a week in enhanced broadcasting content for NBC's Saturday morning block of teenage programming and NBC sports programs. There also will be some enhanced broadcasting each day during prime time.
The enhanced content will be available to viewers using a personal computer with a digital TV function, a digital television set or a powerful set top box that can tune in the new digital signals.
Included in the items that Intel will license to NBC are the software, tools and the applications to create and insert the enhanced portions of the digital broadcast into NBC's existing programming.
Material from Reuters was used in this report
|
