Enhancing TV....................................................
tvbroadcast.com
The Many Flavors Of Enhanced TV
New Interactive Services on the Horizon
By Debra Kaufman
This month, MoreCom will debut its end-to-end software solution that merges digital television (DTV) with Internet content for 600,000 customers of a yet-undisclosed cable operator.
In the first quarter of 1999, TiVo will unveil its service that enables subscribers to customize their television viewing. And, beginning Summer 1999, 1.5 million subscribers to EchoStar's DISH Network will be able to access interactive services through OpenTV technology and software.
These three companies are at the forefront of a move to bring a range of enhanced services to television viewers, through hardware and software solutions based on capabilities inherent in DTV. Though past efforts at interactive television have been less than impressive, these companies are betting that they've avoided the pitfalls by creating services tailored
to the needs of viewers, content producers, advertisers, and the networks.
The Horsham, PA-based MoreCom offers Internet access via software-enhanced NT-based servers at the headend and HTML-based software, called MoreClient, in the digital set-top box.
According to President/CEO Ami Miron, the system can run "on any standard hardware that is either DVB or Open Cable compliant."
At Western Show's CableNet '98 this month, MoreCom showed digital set-top boxes from Pioneer, Zenith, GI, Sagem, and others that incorporate MoreCom software.
The MoreCom system integrates the Internet at the headend, along with digital video. At home, the viewer uses a specialized remote control to navigate a browser-like screen that allows him to blend TV and the Internet in different ways, such as picture-in-picture.
"We can always maintain display of TV and the Internet simultaneously so we don't take the TV experience away from the viewer, but just complement it with the Internet," explained Miron.
The viewer can customize a menu of his favorite sites and, with an optional wireless keyboard, send and receive email. MoreVideo allows MPEG video on the Internet to be displayed on the TV set.
The MoreCom solution is applicable to both one-way and two-way DTV networks and is compatible with broadband networking infrastructures such as HFC cable network, MMDS wireless cable, DBS, and xDSL.
With its roots in a 1994 joint development and marketing alliance between Thomson Multimedia and Sun Microsystems, the Mountain View, CA-based OpenTV is an end-to-end hardware and software solution that can be deployed via DBS, cable and digital set-top boxes.
CEO Jan Steenkamp notes that OpenTV has already played a leading role in the initial launch of interactive television services on French direct-to-home digital satellite broadcaster la Television Par Satellite (TPS) in early 1997, as well as providing its software solution to various other European cablecasters and broadcasters.
Like MoreCom, OpenTV incorporates Internet data alongside the video and audio streams sent to the homes in digital format. Content providers who license OpenTV use its SDK, a C++ programming tool called Open Author, to create Internet applications such as traffic or weather information, sports statistics or electronic banking.
OpenTV Snap! tools generate high-quality MPEG stills suitable for television broadcasting. Producers turn Web content into MPEG files and OpenTV text that allows the pages to be read easily on a TV set.
At the cable headend or satellite uplink, the service provider loads the compiled application into the OpenTV FlowCaster, which acts as digital multicaster to permit Internet information to be accessed instantaneously in the home to any OpenTV compatible set-top box.
A FlowCaster "carousel" can hold up to 20 websites. At home, the viewer uses a modified remote control to access the enhanced services. End users also benefit from OpenTV's cross-platform interoperability.
"Just repurposing Internet content on the TV isn't a winner," said Steenkamp. "Our winner is interactive content alongside programming. We think we'd lose the subscriber by making it too difficult. If we want this technology to be successful, we must take a small step."
"Turning primetime into anytime" is the goal of TiVo, a Sunnyvale, CA company, product and service founded in 1997 by former Silicon Graphics, Inc. Senior Vice President Michael Ramsay and Vice President James Barton.
According to vice president of marketing and business development Ed MacBeth, TiVo's service works similarly to the way a search engine functions as a "portal" to the Internet, providing a customized "PersonalCast," available whenever the viewer desires. The TiVo service is also non-centralized, requiring no hardware or software at the headend or uplink of content providers.
The service's power resides in the set-top TiVo Center, which MacBeth anticipates will be built into future digital set-top boxes. Equipped with a tuner, modem and high capacity hard drive, the TiVo Center plugs into the video source (terrestrial, cable or satellite) much like a VCR. When the user purchases the TiVo Center, he or she also signs up for the TiVo service that, every night (using the home phone line), downloads detailed programming guide data for the following day's programming (from Tribune Media Services), network programming "showcases" and specialized advertising promotions into the user's home Center.
The programming guide becomes a database for the Center's proprietary Viewergraphic Profiling technology, which matches viewer preferences with the day's programming. Viewergraphic Profiling enables the viewer to "educate" the Center about his viewing choices by, during a TV program, pressing "thumbs up" or "thumbs down" on a specialized remote control or by explicitly teaching the Center about his programming interests.
As the TiVo Center learns the viewer's preferences, it downloads programming to the set-top box that fits that profile of viewing choices. When the viewer turns on his TV and accesses the TiVo service, the opening "Now Showing" screen lists the programs that the service has downloaded. Since the Center caches programming, this in-home hard drive also allows viewers to pause, rewind and slo-mo live television.
At the system's core is TiVo's Extensible Timeshifting Architecture, a proprietary silicon system application software and reference design that manages real-time video streaming on and off of the large capacity hard disc in the TiVo Center.
MacBeth stressed the fault tolerant, LINIX-based secure file system is robust and low-cost--estimated to cost the consumer under $500.
"We've learned our personal success stories from the Internet," said MacBeth. "Intelligent agents, portals, push technology and search-and-browse were all our inspirations."
Only time will tell if, with the advent of digital television, this next-generation round of interactive services will also prove inspirational to viewers.
For more information, call (408) 747-5080.
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