From: Ramon Chen
Sent: Monday, January 14, 2002 9:25 AM
To: *All MetaTV
Subject: Hot News Alert: MetaTV the focus of an article in SJ Business journal about iTV
This article was published in the Sillicon Valley/SJ Business Journal, it features quotes from Andrew and has MetaTV as a focus.
If you live in the south bay, the SJ Business Journal is available at large book stores such as Barnes and Noble.
There is a photo of Andrew in our living room in the print version.
Note that there are minor inconsistencies relating to what we have deployed etc. This is typical for interviews where reporters extrapolate or misunderstand.
For instance, we did not state that WorldGate was a competitor, the reporter projected that information. Also the Ford implementation was again an extrapolation from the reporter confusing our Ceder Falls deployment with our Ford VOD prototype. All in all a very good public awareness building article for MetaTV and positions us well as we follow up with additional announcements shortly.
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Interactive TV companies see a brighter 2002
Robert Mullins and Neil Orman
Andrew Lev sees the future of interactive TV — and his company — when he watches text crawl across the bottom of his TV screen.
Picture Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan announcing an interest rate cut on CNBC, a business news cable network, as stock ticker data zips by below his image.
“How big of a leap would it be to hit a button and have your own portfolio pop up?” asks Mr. Lev, whose Bay Area company hopes to make that happen, perhaps this year.
MetaTV Inc., of Mill Valley, makes a software platform that cable and satellite TV companies can use to create the TV version of a Web portal. The company’s technology converts Web pages for use on TV sets for shopping, making travel reservations, tracking stock portfolios and other uses.
MetaTV and its competitors — Trevose, Pa.-based Worldgate Communications, Dallas-based SourceMedia and Kirkland, Wash.-based Digeo Inc. — are scrambling to land technology trials this year with cable and satellite TV providers before their rivals do.
These companies inhabit one niche of a diverse and expanding interactive TV business — including digital video recorders, video-on-demand services and TV-based Web access — which has been stalled for years due to slow user adoption and a lack of technology standards. But analysts are predicting widespread trials of interactive TV services will occur this year and deployment in 2003. MetaTV’s founder says consumers will start to see the results this year.
“This year will certainly be the year when we show great progress with rolling out interactive television services,” he predicts.
But while interactive TV promoters tout its promise, there hasn’t exactly been an Oklahoma Land Rush by consumers for the service.
The number of subscriptions to Microsoft Corp.’s WebTV service has been “languishing” at about 1 million, reports CNET News.com, a technology news Web site. Sales of TiVo devices that — like ReplayTV — record favorite TV shows onto a hard drive rather than magnetic tape, have reached only 300,000 units since 1999, reports The New York Times.
Skeptics note that Americans tend to limit their interactivity to their personal computers. When it comes to TV, they like to just watch.
Some cable and satellite TV services are expected to announce deployment of enhanced interactive TV services — using MetaTV technology — in key markets in the first quarter and wider deployment late in 2002 or early in 2003, Mr. Lev says. He declined to identify the providers, the markets or any other details.
Today, competitors Worldgate and SourceMedia are the only ones with announced trials, putting MetaTV at an initial disadvantage. However, MetaTV has three major cable TV providers as investors — Cox Communications Inc. and Comcast Corp. (two major cable TV providers in the U.S.); and Rogers Communications, a cable TV provider in Canada.
“You can’t bluff your investors about when the market is going to roll out when they are the customers also,” Mr. Lev says.
One industry observer thinks that type of investment support may serve MetaTV well.
“MetaTV needs to land some trials,” says Adi Kishore, an analyst with the Yankee Group, “but the company has some powerful investors and that should help.”
Comcast launched a trial of Worldgate’s interactive TV portal technology in Willow Grove, Pa., in November 2000. For an additional fee, Willow Grove users of Comcast digital cable can get e-mail and Internet access on their TVs. Another cable operator, Charter Communications, launched a similar trial of Digeo’s technology in Glendale in November 2001. The trial gives customers access to six “virtual” Internet channels of news, weather, shopping and other information.
Because they control 70 percent of U.S. homes, the cable companies are considered the most important target market for interactive TV. Several of MetaTV’s cable investors have already shown an aggressive commitment to the service. In addition to its trial of Worldgate’s technology, Comcast has also launched extensive trials of video-on-demand and high-definition TV.
Whenever it happens, the interactive TV sector’s takeoff has major implications for Silicon Valley. A diverse array of valley firms make software or hardware used in interactive TV systems including Moxi Digital Inc. (formerly Rearden Steel Technologies Inc.), Diva Systems Corp., of Redwood City; BEA Systems Inc., of San Jose; BigBand Networks Inc., of Fremont; Liberate Technologies, of San Carlos; and Sun Microsystems Inc., of Palo Alto. SONICBlue Inc., the maker of the ReplayTV program recording system, is in Santa Clara, and Tivo Inc., which makes digital video recorders, is based in Alviso.
MetaTV, founded in 1999, seeks to make interactive TV user-friendly by acknowledging the differences between TV watching and Web surfing, Mr. Lev says. People look at their computer screen from 14 inches away, but their TV set from 14 feet away, so TV Web page design has to be simpler, less cluttered and with larger link icons to different pages.
Interactive TV also seeks to take advantage of the richer video possible on television compared with slow-moving, smeared video streaming on a PC.
One of MetaTV’s content partners is Ford Outfitters, the marketing campaign of Ford Motor Co., of Dearborn, Mich., for its line of sport-utility vehicles. A Web page created on MetaTV’s software platform allows a car shopper to get information on Ford SUVs and take a virtual test drive on TV, Mr. Lev says.
In another example, he says, a consumer can plan a Hawaiian vacation by seeing video of a Maui beach that is more robust than one still picture of a beach on a Web page.
“A lot of the things you see online are just text and graphics. Interactive TV becomes interesting when text and graphics and video are intermixed,” Mr. Lev says.