Interactive TV - Who Uses it? Who Develops It?

bad$eed asks: "I have been in software and Internet development for 6 years. However, I have never used or seen 'Interactive TV'. It seems to be that there are a few standards around (MS WebTV, Open Digital TV, etc). Is this going to take off? I see that my bank (HSBC) now has banking through Open Digital. Who are the developers out there in the field and what tools are they using and how is it different to regular HTML content delivery? Is there a standards war going on in Interactive TV? Where does one start?"

iTV is not just cable-based

[Anonymous Coward]

A lot of progress is being made on interactive TV services using xDSL, FTTH, FTTC or other piece of alphabet soup. Cable-based interactive TV may be cool today, but IP-based Interactive TV over telco-broadband networks looks really promising.

Check iMagicTV [imagictv.com] who makes the software that makes it all work, Harmonic [divi.com] or Pixstream (lately bought by Cisco [pixstream.com] who both make encoders that output a multicast MPEG2 stream. Even network vendors are all excited because TV over copper/fibre really improved the business case for installing broadband.

I see the future of interactive tv

[Anonymous Coward]

dix+ [projectmayo.com] programming, with a freenet [sourceforge.net] mozilla [mozilla] based client that has a pop up tivo(tm) style digital content listing so when you click the link it launches your mayo client inside your mozilla browser on your television set. Dix+ will allow content producers(talk show host, movie makers, etc..) to embedd advertising/e-commerce capablities into the works they upload to freenet.

Digital TV & Privacy

[julianc]

I can't believe nobodys picked up on the privacy issues of digital tv.

Checkout Interactive TV spies on Viewers [spyinteractive.com]

also checkout
ACTV SpotOn Technology [actv.com] - which has recently received funding from OpenTV - a major player on Sky Digital.

J.

UK, how is is here - How it will be in the US

[Admiral Lazzurs]

Well, in the UK you can anything with your tv, shop, bank, you name it. However, the protocalls seem to be controlled by the companies that are providing the service, each one not wanting to tell the other how they are doing it. Soon I hope they will realise that working together is better, but it does not look that way at the moment.

The most promising option looks like cable, all the satelite brodcasting relies on dial-up, same with simple brodcast (aerial on the side of the house, land based transmitters) digital (called ON Digital here). Cable has the option for very high bandwidth, and would be excellent for browsing the net if TV's get better.

Actually running ip-based TV

[jaand96]

So called Digital Tv is common these days, but they require a return-channel to be truly interactive (usually a modem). With ip-based tv distributed on broadband (xdsl...) the interactive part will be much bigger. Is anyone aware of any such services?

Not likely

[Exedore]

Just my opinion of course, but I don't see interactive TV becoming very popular. The passivity of television is part of its appeal. No thought necessary, you just sit back and zone.

Hell, people already fight over who gets the remote... would a keyboard/mouse/whatever be any different? Do you think Joe Sixpack will interrupt pro wrestling because his wife wants to send an email? "Dammit, woman, use the 'puter for that sheeeyit! Sting's about to hit this guy over the head with a chair!"

Take a look at MPEG-4

[syokim]

I would suggest taking a moment to look into the MPEG-4 standard. My company (www.ivast.com if interested) is creating end-to-end MPEG-4 solutions for rich, interactive multimedia content creators.

Interactive TV info

[Argyle]

I work in television for a large mega-corp content provider. I have worked many of the companies involved in the world of interactive television. The closest thing we have to a standard is ATVEF [atvef.com], a collection of software companies, content providers, cable/DSS providers, and consumer product manufacturers. If you look at the founders list [atvef.com], you will see a who's who of the companies that get TV and data into your house.

The basic idea of 'interactive TV' is the ability to provide a web type experience while watching TV . Yes, it may not be what everyone thinks is the killer application, but it is feasible and it can work today. Both Microsoft, Intel, and Liberate [liberate.com] (formally NCI, formally Network Computer, spun off by Oracle) are using the ATVEF standards as a basis for their work. Companies like PowerTV [powertv.com], OpenTV [opentv.com], and Wink [wink.com] are attempting to use proprietary formats and software to achieve the the same goal.

The ATVEF group have developed a set of extension s to HTML that allow an ATVEF enabled device to display TV and web type images simultaneously. You can see a real example of this by watching Jeopardy on a WebTV box. You can play along with the show.

Part of the ATVEF standard calls for the inclusion of triggers and javascript type information to be actually sent with the video in the VBI (vertical blanking interval). This type of triggering allows synchonized events without worrying about the latency of the TV path.

A company called Mixed Signals [mixedsignals.com] does this type of TV enhancement for other comapnies.

Another type of enhanced TV is the 'two screen' type. Two screen means haivng your computer and TV in the same room. ABC has been doing this with Monday Night Football and Who Wants to be a Millionaire. If you watch a MNF or SNF game and see a play dispute instant replay, you will see the internet users actually voting on wether the play should stand or not. The count is updated in realtime on television. You can try it ABC's enhanced TV [go.com] the next time one of their shows is on.

I's suggest reading the ATEVF site a bit. It's the standard supported by most of the content providers. They are the ones going to pay the big bill to enhance TV.

Let me know if you need to know more. I have the connections to find out pretty much any answer about this stuff.
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who would want it?

[cheeserd00d]

i don't know about anyone else, but i personally don't want interactive tv - ok, sure it would be cool but i would much rather sit back and just chill, not really even thinking a ton and being plain lazy (no i'm not some fat dude who sits and watches tv all day)

i doubt i'm the only one who has this view

Re:Sports coverage in the UK.

[plumby]

As I believe that it needs telephone access, and calls over here are not free, very few choose to use the service.

The telephone connection is only for certain parts of the service (e.g. email, making a purchace etc). Most of the service is connection free. The interactive football offers quite a lot more than just different camera angles (which are all pretty pointless anyway - especially the "follow one player round the pitch instead of watching the game" option). The most useful feature that I find is the highlights option. This allows you to see all of the highlights of the game so far at any point during the match. This is especially useful for matches that I'm only have a passing interest in (e.g. other teams in my division, recent England matches).

Sky News also has quite a handy interactive section, which allows you to see the main news reports/weather etc at any time.

The actual Open service, which is a separate service, not associated with any channel, is pretty rubish. It's painfully slow, and the three times that I've tried to order anything on it, it's either refused to accept my credit card number, or it's just crashed, but the channel specific stuff is quite handy.

Who's who

[GiantPez]

I work for Liberate Technologies, a software company heavily involved in the interactive TV space.

There are many companies trying to get pieces of this market right now. You've got service providers (ISPs, Telcos, and cable companies), hardware manufacturers (for set top boxes / cable boxes), middleware suppliers (who write embedded client software for the set top boxes and server software at the provider end to support all the client boxes), and content providers (who create and/or run servers to house ITV content).

Liberate is a middleware (software) supplier. Our biggest competitor right now is (of course) MicrosoftTV (don't know the official URL). So far we've been holding our own against them (even stealing customers from them sometimes, which is satisfying), but they have a way of sneaking up on you. Another competitor is OpenTV [opentv.com]. As far as protocols go, Liberate builds on open and existing standards (MPEG, HTML, JavaScript, Java). OpenTV uses their own proprietary protocols, as does MicrosoftTV I believe (haven't seen much from them yet).

-- I speak for myself, not for Liberate.

Sports coverage in the UK.

[shippo]

Sky Sports, a digital satellite broadcaster, broadcast some football (soccer to the heathens) in interactive format. Although I havn't used it myself (I refuse to pay Murdoch a penny) it allows you to choose which camera angle to view from. As I believe that it needs telephone access, and calls over here are not free, very few choose to use the service.

Personally I attend the games - more atmosphere, and pies! My team hasn't been on live television for at least 5 years, apart from a pre-season friendly game on a subscription only channel, so it doesn't affect me anyway.