From: Ramon Chen
Sent: Monday, May 06, 2002 5:51 AM
To: *All MetaTV
Subject: Capt. Midnight: NCTA Pre-show – MetaTV and SeaChange. MetaTV, SeaChange and Liberate team up
Hello and greetings from New Orleans NCTA early morning day one.
We are here at NCTA, one of the two largest industry shows that we participate in every year. See www.cable2002.com
Well the suite is all set and ready to go thanks as usual to Jeff K and Craig T. Photos to come later in Capt. Midnight.
While unlike last year in Chicago we don’t have our own booth on the show floor here, we are making the most of our presence and visibility to
Innovate. Adapt. Amaze.
Our fully equipped suite will allow us to highlight demos and arrange private meetings with partners, customers and prospects in a one-on-one setting and
we also have a manned presence at the Motorola booth. This year non of our usual partners – Liberate, Microsoft, OpenTV – are having partners in their booths although they are showing our cool applications that you all have worked hard to continue to develop for our customers such as Cox, Comcast and TMS.
As with any show, day one means news, news, news and we are not one to be left out:
1) SeaChange and MetaTV Partner to Offer Cable Operators a Fully Integrated iTV Applications Solution
This joint release we put out makes a statement to the industry that MetaTV is teaming up with one of the leading VOD suppliers in the industry to produce iTV applications (such as video-based virtual/personal channels). While we are unable at this time to name an MSO (due to NDA restrictions) it will give us very nice awareness and visibility moving us squarely into the video realm as well as continuing to highlight us as “the” iTV applications platform.
The news can be found on our home page at www.metatv.com and on Yahoo finance linked through SeaChange’s public ticker SEAC at
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/020506/sfm060_1.html
2) Liberate Shows OnDemand Player Technology Bringing New Video Capabilities To Interactive Platform
SeaChange & MetaTV Team Up With Liberate to Show OnDemand Possibilities For Cable
This 3-way joint release features an announcement about Liberate’s onDemand player technology. While we do not make a habit of endorsing Liberate’s products – particularly one which we feel we have capabilities and technology that can accomplish the same results (only better) – we again did take this opportunity to participate in order to ensure that we gain mindshare through our positioning and messaging. Within the release you will see that there are a generic list of bulleted benefits which are achievable as a result of the combination of Liberate VOD Player, MetaTV’s iTV Application Platform and SeaChange Systems.
In addition, John Carney’s quote clearly stakes our territory as claiming what we do and how ” … Our platform is able to package content and business rules from a variety of disparate sources to deliver a robust solution integrated with Liberate and SeaChange’s infrastructure.” By putting this quote into the release, we subtly turn the Liberate VOD player announcement into a vehicle for MetaTV’s application platform and state that we are the company that is bringing and integrating Liberate and SeaChange’s components …. effectively claiming poll strategic positioning while Liberate focuses on the benefits of one individual product. Finally, if you scroll down, you’ll notice that our boiler plate describing “About MetaTV” comes first in the release :-). (non-alphabetical)
The news can again be found on our home page as well as on Yahoo finance linked through Liberate’s public ticker LBRT at
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/020506/sfm089_1.html
Many thanks to everyone who worked on this release Friday morning and afternoon to position it to our advantage and playing the game of poker with Liberate to get it he way we wanted it. Also, special thanks to Greg Thomson who through his personal contacts with Liberate was the one that got us the opportuntity to start with and did most of the legwork to set the expectations at Liberate’s end, ensuring that they knew that MetaTV would be looking to be agressively positioned as “the iTV applications platform” in the context of the release.
3) Microsoft TV Developer Program on Fast Track With 1,500 Companies Joining Since January
“… Leading companies, including Caiman Technologies Ltd., Everstream Inc., MetaTV Inc., Nielsen Media Research and Predictive Networks, are among the members making extensive use of the program’s resources.”
Microsoft TV today re-announced their Developer program and we are one of 5 companies mentioned in the first paragraph of their press release. Note that we did not supply them with a personal quote within the body of the release. This allows us to maintain visibility within the context of Microsoft’s ever-shifting iTV strategy but does not anchor us to them through strong quoted endorsement.
The news can be found on our news page at http://www.metatv.com/news/index.htm (since it’s not really home page worthy for us) and on Yahoo finance linked through Microsoft’s ticker MSFT at
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/020506/sfm057_1.html
That’s all for now … we also have a press conference scheduled at the NCTA convention center to see if we can drum up more interest with the press.
So stay tuned and ” …. let’s get on with the show …”
Capt. Midnight