Los Gatos, Calif.-based interactive TV company, ICTV, says that Hong Kong-based communications provider, PCCW, has chosen its ActiveVideo Distribution Network (AVDN) to power interactive TV channels on its now TV service, which--with 654,000 subscribers--happens to be the world's largest IPTV service. The first ActiveVideo channel offered by now TV is called the Movie Trailer Channel and was launched in partnership with United Artists. It allows subscribers to preview movies, choose movie theater locations, check program times, request seat locations, and buy tickets using their regular remote controls. According to ICTV, PCCW plans to offer several more ActiveVideo channels and applications. "ICTV has provided the quality and scalability that have enabled us to offer the most powerful interactive television platform in the world," Dominic Leung, PCCW's managing director of television and content, said in a prepared statement. "The Movie Trailer Channel is the first example of how ActiveVideo Distribution Network will enable our subscribers to find and control an entirely new series of television channels of high-quality video with interactivity and information that specifically meets their individual preferences."
The ActiveVideo Distribution Network is a usage-based content distribution service which ICTV launched earlier this year. ICTV touts the AVDN as enabling operators, programmers and advertisers to bring broadband video programming and advertising models from the Internet--including ads that are targeted, auditable and interactive--to linear television and VOD. The service is based on the company's proprietary HeadendWare technology, and on a technology dubbed "InStream," which it obtained through its acquisition earlier this year of Switched Media (see [itvt] Issue 6.60). According to ICTV, the AVDN is entirely standards-based (thus requiring no custom integration or proprietary development) and runs within existing Web and VOD infrastructures, acquiring programming and applications from standard Web servers, mixing it with live and VOD elements, and delivering it from the headend as MPEG video: it uses the on-demand return path to receive user input to control the programming it delivers and provide interactivity. It can easily be integrated with existing set-top box-based interactive TV technologies, the company says. According to ICTV, viewers can use their remotes to select an ActiveVideo channel from a standard EPG, and enter a "broadband experience" that integrates video, navigational elements, channel branding, banner ads, and links to multiple video segments. Screens can be manipulated to reflect personal viewing interests and purchasing preferences, and can also be powered by recommendation engines based on viewer preferences, the company says. Ads within this "broadband experience" are, of course, fully interactive, with features such as "telescoping."
Originally Published: November 6, 2006 in [itvt] Issue 7.03 Part 2
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