AOL-Time-Warner. Interactive TV. Somebody will need to encode this content..............................
Microsoft recently began shipping a Web TV box through satellite TV provider Echostar Communications Corp. of Denver, the newspaper reported. The product contains video recording capabilities, but Echostar executives say the amount of interactive programming available leaves something to be desired. "The biggest issue we all have is content," Mark Jackson, a senior vice president at Echostar, told the Wall Street Journal. "It's a desert -- it's not even meager."
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Television & Cable
1/21 15:37 CST Email this article
AOL plans to sell interactive TV to masses
KANSAS CITY, Mo., Jan. 21 (Media Central) - Merger partners America Online Inc. and Time Warner Inc. are working to make interactive TV click with consumers, the Wall Street Journal reported today.
Interactive television would allow consumers to shop on their TVs, play games, order movies and even interact with their favorite shows. Previous experiments with interactive TV in the early 1990s failed from audiences, and the technology never matured, the Wall Street Journal reported.
AOL said it plans to launch AOL TV this summer. If the proposed acquisition of Time Warner takes place, AOL executives say they will be in a better position to overcome a major problem that has stopped previous interactive TV trials: the lack of programming that makes us of interactivity, the Wall Street Journal reported. With Time Warner's video programming in the AOL arsenal, the online company says it will be able to invest heavily in interactive content even before a market for it exists, the newspaper reported.
The features of AOL TV could take many forms. A viewer watching Time Warner's CNNfn financial news channel may be able to execute a stock trade when a company is mentioned on the air. Viewers of "ER," meanwhile, may be able to chat with buddies during the program, or read a synopsis of the last show in text form on their TV screen, the newspaper reported.
If the merger is approved, AOL Time Warner would have a large cable system through which it can distribute set-top boxes containing AOL TV. However, Microsoft Corp. has an agreement to distribute interactive set-top boxes to millions of AT&T Corp. cable subscribers, through a $5 billion investment the company made last year in AT&T, the newspaper reported.
If two-way, high-speed cable, satellite and telephone connections become commonplace, both AOL and Microsoft said they see their respective boxes as the high-tech tuners that will blend entertainment and information on TV sets, the newspaper reported. Control of those tuners could yield huge subscription, commerce and marketing opportunities, the newspaper reported.
Time Warner's "full service network," an effort in the mid-1990s to provide interactive TV to thousands of cable subscribers in Orlando, Fla., failed. For a time, the subscribers could access video-on-demand, home shopping and other services, but the system was eventually abandoned, mainly because the set-top boxes cost thousands of dollars each, the newspaper reported.
Since the rise of the Internet, most of the information and shopping services once envisioned for interactive TV is already available. In response, companies such as Microsoft's Web TV unit attempted to bring the web to the TV through set-top products that enabled simple web surfing, the newspaper reported.
However, after several years on the market, there are only about a million subscribers to Web TV, the newspaper reported. Part of the problem, the company told the Wall Street Journal, is that the first model forced consumers to switch from watching TV shows to surfing web sites. Newer versions of Web TV more thoroughly merge TV and web content. For instance, the game shows "Jeopardy" and "Wheel of Fortune" create small programs that let Web TV users play along at home while watching the shows. Microsoft says TV producers have created interactive links to more than 350 hours of programming, the newspaper reported.
Microsoft recently began shipping a Web TV box through satellite TV provider Echostar Communications Corp. of Denver, the newspaper reported. The product contains video recording capabilities, but Echostar executives say the amount of interactive programming available leaves something to be desired. "The biggest issue we all have is content," Mark Jackson, a senior vice president at Echostar, told the Wall Street Journal. "It's a desert -- it's not even meager."
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