ICTV-YooMedia Joint Venture to Begin Interactive TV Trials on ntl

--ICTV CEO, Jeff Miller, Discusses the Development with [itvt]

BroadbandTV Group, a joint venture between UK-based YooMedia and US-based ICTV that was set up last fall (see [itvt] Issue 5.68 Part 1), recently announced that, following successful lab tests, UK cable operator, ntl, will begin live trials of Internet-based interactive TV programming using ICTV's HeadendWare platform. (Note: earlier this week, ntl announced that it has acquired rival Telewest, in a £3.4 billion cash-and-shares deal.) The trials will take place in a select group of ntl digital cable households in a number of geographical locations in the fourth quarter. The HeadendWare platform is designed to overcome the limitations of the low-resource set-top boxes which have been widely deployed by cable operators in the US and elsewhere and which are unlikely to be replaced anytime soon. It pushes complex, IP-based ITV applications--encoded in cable environments as MPEG-2 streams--from the headend to thin-client set-top boxes, and allows those apps to utilize a variety of Internet technologies, including HTML, JavaScript, Java, Windows Media Player, Flash, RealPlayer and Quicktime. The trial deployment with ntl will see HeadendWare enabling the delivery of Internet-based interactive programming on ntl's existing set-tops. ntl currently offers a number of relatively simple ITV applications over Liberate middleware.

BroadbandTV Group has developed and aggregated a range of interactive programming for the trials, including news, entertainment, games and lifestyle programming. In order to do so, it has built up a partner program that will allow it to offer ntl customers content--much of it adapted from existing Web sites--from ITN, MTV Networks, Emap, Turner Broadcasting, Sesame Workshop, UKTV and other high-profile programmers. [itvt] asked ICTV CEO, Jeff Miller, to describe some of the interactive content that has been developed for the ntl trial under the auspices of the content partner program: "ITN, for example, is producing an interactive news channel that allows viewers to select and view stories and video clips," he explained. "Some of the clips will be national in orientation, and others will be localized to the area where the content is being viewed. MTV is offering music videos in an Internet style--meaning that you can click on a clip and view it, or click on information that surrounds the clip. So it's a more granular, interactive experience. If you look at MTV Overdrive online and see the way that operates, that's similar to what we're offering in the ntl trial. Sesame Workshop," he continued, "will primarily be providing children's games, including TvHead games--as you know, we have deployed those games in several Time Warner Cable and Grande Communications systems in the US. Turner Broadcasting is offering Cartoon Network games and content, again presented in a Web style, where players can click on the games they would like to play or the content they'd like to view. Emap is providing a streaming radio service--a replay-radio service, if you will. You can click on it and hear both live and canned radio-play content from their radio stations. UKTV, meanwhile, has produced a food channel that provides on-demand cooking information: recipes, cooking videos, that kind of thing, that you click through with your remote control." Miller added that some of the content will be offered free-of-charge and some on a subscription basis: "The goal is to evaluate not only how the technology operates on ntl's live network, but how well the content sells," he said. [itvt] asked Miller what kinds of challenges BroadbandTV Group faced in preparing its offering for ntl: "The challenges were fairly minor," he said. "Most of them were related to resolution adjustments--to the process of making content that was designed for PC resolution look good on television. The rest of the year between signing our deal and launching the service was spent developing various tests within ntl's network, and verifying that our technology integrates properly with their VOD platform, their middleware and their EPG."

One of BroadbandTV's primary goals with the ntl deployment, according to Miller, has been to ensure that its interactive services are seamlessly integrated with the traditional television-viewing experience: "ICTV is a strong proponent of the idea that interactive content should not be presented on television as a separate service," he said. "It shouldn't be that you either watch TV or you watch interactive. The proper way to do this is by creating additional channels of content--so that some channels happen to be linear channels and some channels happen to give you the ability to interact. So this is how our service is being presented to ntl customers: it will be embedded in the EPG, and it will be possible from the EPG to select these new interactive channels. The content has to be TV-friendly and integrated in such a way that it becomes a natural part of the viewing experience. So what will happen is that you'll go to the guide, and within it you'll see a listing for The Cartoon Network's linear channel, and then right next to it you'll see "Cartoon Network Interactive"--or however it will be branded--and that will be the interactive version of the channel. We're hoping to create more and more of these channels that will live in the EPG and blur the distinction between what is interactive and what is television. Our belief is that content that shows up on television needs to look like television."

Another goal for ICTV with the ntl trial, Miller said, is to validate its belief that one of the important advantages of its technology is its ability to repurpose as a natural, "televisual" end-user experience the increasing amount of video-rich multimedia content that is currently being developed for the Web: "What we're seeing in the industry is the creation of more and more content for Web distribution that looks like television, with more video and less text, but still with the kind of sophisticated control you have on a Web site," he said. "So, while we certainly do other things--HeadendWare is great for playing games, for example--where we think that HeadendWare will have its strongest impact is in bringing all this content that is being created for the Web to cable and IPTV. Because what that does is give consumers the wide array of content choices and the kind of fine-grained control you get on the Web, without their having to go to their home office and sit at their computer to do it--and it gives it to them in a way that integrates seamlessly with the rest of their TV viewing."

According to Miller, ntl is interested in deploying ICTV's technology not least because it believes it will allow it to leapfrog BSkyB's interactive services: "One of the main reasons they like this offering is because it's extremely competitive with what's offered on Sky," he said. "In fact, a lot of what we're doing with them, you just can't do on Sky. Until now, their interactive offering has been based on Liberate middleware, and it's essentially limited to--at best--doing nothing more than Sky. In contrast, our headend-based solution offers more capabilities and more content possibilities than you can do either on Sky's platform or on Liberate middleware." [itvt] asked Miller if he believes that HeadendWare will supersede use of Liberate's middleware on ntl if the trial proves successful. "No, I don't believe that's their intention," he said. "At any rate, we've always believed at ICTV that, while there are many functions that belong in the network, there are still some functions that belong in the set-top box. We don't seek to replace functions that belong in the set-top box, we seek to enhance them. The guide, we think, has a place in the set-top box; enhanced overlays and those kinds of things also belong in the set-top. However, we believe that there are kinds of interactive content--exemplified by the personalized channels we've created for this trial--that can't be done by technology in a set-top box. It should be embedded in the programming and should be offered from the network. So we're basically extending what Liberate's middleware can do in a set-top box by offering additional interactive programming that comes from the network."

ICTV is also currently conducting lab trials of HeadendWare with London-based Video Networks, the company that offers the VOD-enabled IPTV service, HomeChoice. While Miller said he was not at liberty to discuss those trials in any detail, he told us that they are proceeding very well, and that ICTV is also working with a number of other IPTV providers that it has yet to announce. "One of the real strengths of our solution is that it is platform-independent--it works just as well on IPTV as on cable," he said. "This, of course, is very attractive to content providers, as we can offer them the ability to produce one version of a channel, program or other piece of content and to have it reach a very wide audience. So we aren't just going to content providers with the proposition, 'Port to our platform and we'll get you on ntl,' but with the proposition, 'Simply repurpose the content that you already have in your Web properties, and we'll make it available to ntl, Grande, Time Warner, and anyone else we're working with.'"

URL: http://www.ictv.com

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