Interactive Apps in the Works: The “S” Word Gains Momentum

June 2001 Issue
Interactive Apps in the Works: The “S” Word Gains Momentum
By Jonathan Tombes, CT Senior Editor
ITV applications require integration. That’s not easy, but it’s necessary if you’re looking for interactive synergy.
Let’s stipulate at the outset that interactive TV (ITV) is a broad, confusing term. It bundles electronic or interactive program guides (EPGs/IPGs), video-on-demand (VOD), personal video recorder (PVR) technology, Web browsing, t-commerce, gaming, remote controls, infrared-enabled keyboards, and more, under an acronym whose “I” many consumers assume refers to the Internet.
Interactive applications–or apps–is a slightly more precise term, denoting software that resides above a uniform interface, or middleware, which itself rests upon a set-top’s operating system.
These apps may have largely independent identities. OpenTV’s Device Mosaic Web browser, for instance, has no intrinsic relation to Gemstar’s EPG, or Commerce.TV’s client. They are more related by convenience, by co-habiting the same piece of set-top real estate and employing the same pipeline.
But once integrated, interactive apps have the potential to be transformed from merely convenient to genuinely productive allies. This is the alchemy of synergy, what our colleagues at CableFAX Daily call “the ‘S’ word” for its blatant overuse by the public relations industry.
Synergy happens, but rarely by itself. Instead, it requires cooperation among partners, between competitors, and even across separate industries.
Challenges and cash flow
What is ITV’s biggest challenge? “Getting all of the software making these really cool applications work and operationally friendly to the MSOs,” Tom DuBreuil, director of system engineering for Motorola’s DigiCable unit, says.
The bar of operational friendliness varies among operators.
Charter Communications, for instance, was the first multiple system operator (MSO) to commit to Motorola’s high-end DCT-5000, announcing a rollout in two major markets this fall. Charter also plans to outfit its Scientific-Atlanta boxes with an ITV product developed jointly with Digeo, a tight-lipped company supported (as is Charter) by Paul Allen and his Vulcan Ventures.
These latest digital set-top boxes bring the picture of synergistic, interactive apps into focus. Jim Henderson, Charter vice president for corporate development and technology, says bundling VOD into a set-top, for instance, could lead to pre-populating the hard drive with video streams, which then changes the dynamics of a VOD business model.
“You then start talking about music download capabilities, MP3, jukeboxes on the hard drives that are in the devices,” Henderson says. “It just starts opening up many other avenues.”
Some apps already are starting to earn their keep. Charter spokesman Andy Morgan says that Wink Communications’ enhanced TV offering, serving 300,000 customers in 30 systems, generated more than $1 million in cash flow last year.
“Twenty-five percent of viewers who saw Wink ads clicked for more information, and then 40 percent accepted whatever the offer was.” Morgan says. “We’re getting more than a million interactive Wink clicks a month.”
In a pace perhaps more in line with MSOs at large, Cox Communications, while aggressive on the telephony and pure VOD fronts, has ITV “in the lab,” a spokesperson says. Its test mode status gives ITV the impression of being stalled.
Complex combinations
But the challenges of building a seamless ITV platform are not trivial. Next-generation set-tops, for instance, create both solutions and problems.
“An app has to continue to work well on an old box, and work well on a new box, taking advantage of new features,” Ramon Chen, MetaTV’s vice president for worldwide marketing, says.
That raises the challenge of deploying an ITV app by a factor of two. “And then if you multiply that by all the different middleware combinations and set-top boxes, it becomes a factor of 30 or 40,” Chen says.
Middleware provider Liberate tapped MetaTV to navigate those combinations and provide ITV portal technology and services for Liberate’s interactive television pilots on Motorola’s high- and low-end set-tops. MetaTV also has worked with Liberate rival WorldGate and has joined S-A’s CreativEdge program, aimed at helping developers port their apps on S-A’s Explorer set-tops.
While the ITV middleware space has confused many an observer, MetaTV’s founders saw a clear precedent, namely the problem in the business world of making one application run on every machine and platform, regardless of technical nuances.
“When they saw this problem in interactive television, they said ‘This is going to go exactly the same way,'” Chen says. In other words: Competition among the middleware platform vendors and differentiation of set-top boxes, amidst a scarcity of information technology (IT) personnel.
MetaTV’s approach is to abstract the design of any ITV application above the underlying implementation technology layer. “It’s really the concept of design once, run multiple platforms,” Chen says, echoing the mantra of Sun Microsystems’ Java language.
Backed by Cox Communications and Comcast Interactive Capital, among others, MetaTV integrates content through its Universal Portal Platform, incorporating custom-branded portals and intuitive (remote control) user interfaces.
Internet over TV
Another challenge of delivering Internet over TV involves the user interface. Early-generation picture-in-graphics, for instance, was a non-starter, Motorola’s DuBreuil says.
“If you actually try to execute that, and you really mean surfing the Web, it doesn’t really work, because you can’t see what’s in that window,” he says.
Many viewers are opting, by default, for the two-screen solution: Simultaneous use of the personal computer and TV. Motorola is taking that approach a step further by developing a Web Pad device, which is envisioned as not only a handheld Web browser, but also an adjunct to the DCT 5000 box, complete with broadband connectivity.
Web pads aside, Internet on TV remains a visual challenge. Dr. Walt Ciciora’s exhaustive survey of ITV technology, delivered to the Cable & Telecommunications Association for Marketing (CTAM), notes the common problem of those approaching ITV via the Internet. “All share the problem of reformatting computer material for TV display, whether text, graphics or full-motion video,” Ciciora says.
Leveraging the power of its abstraction engine, Chen says MetaTV’s Syndication service can process content from Internet sites on the fly, re-architecting it into a more TV-look and feel.
Internationally deployed middleware player OpenTV boosted its own competence in the transcoding arena through its purchase last summer of Internet software provider SpyGlass.
That acquisition helped shape such products as its service platform suite, Anup Mararka, OpenTV vice president for strategic and product marketing, says. The suite enables delivery of interactive services across all applications, using extensible markup language (XML), hypertext markup language (HTML) and related technologies as data sources.
Mararka says Spyglass already offers “out-of-the-box” transcoding for cell phones and personal digital assistants (PDAs) and is scalable within the TV space as well.
While exploiting innovative technology, OpenTV attends to bottom-line concerns. Mararka says creating a lot of content that generates traffic without the requisite revenue is a bad model.
Not only is too much content potentially bad, but a modest infrastructure may be sufficient. Operators may start with one-way cable plants and telco-return path, as on the DCT-2000 in many systems, and over time upgrade. OpenTV software works regardless, Mararka says.
“We think we’re integrating and supporting those technologies at the right point in the overall adoption curve,” he adds.
The missing link
Apparently, not all developers display that kind of savvy. S-A’s CreativEdge program hosted a developers conference in February that gave operators a chance to vent pet peeves.
One gripe, recounts CreativEdge Director Jenifer Cistola, was directed at developers who arrive at the cable system with great apps but no clue as to how to deploy or support them over time.
“They weren’t getting the after-the-sale piece,” Cistola says.
Cable-deaf developers notwithstanding, ITV’s current stalled mode is not technically driven, Cistola says. Fully developed and documented application programming interfaces (APIs)–the keys to deployment–are already on the table.
“The commercial deals, that’s the missing link,” she says.
How to jump start business between operators and programmers who have sunk billions into, respectively, networks and content? It will take Web designers who cannot only talk cable, but also get closer to programmers.
To that end, CreativEdge hosted a sequel conference in May for programmers. “A lot of these programmers really aren’t plugged into what these apps can do and what’s available,” Cistola says.
Mararka makes a similar point about the unprecedented need for manufacturers, operators and the content and media communities to walk in step.
“If you ignore any one of those segments as part of a product or service definition, I think we’ve pretty consistently seen those products or services fail,” Mararka says.
Integrate me
Negotiating better content deals for enhanced TV (and better “windows” for VOD titles) is one part of the puzzle. Meanwhile, on the technical front, integration remains a trend across all ITV subgroups.
ITV software vendor PowerTV, for instance, has announced an interactive bundle that combines the company’s SofaSurf, SofaChat and SofaMail apps. The product is destined for S-A’s Explorer 8000, as well as boxes offered by Pioneer, Pace and Panasonic. Making these apps work in a network is itself a work in progress.
Making a virtue of necessity (at least for operators in the field), Liberate has now partnered with all major VOD vendors to pre-integrate their respective offerings.
VOD technology also is maneuvering in the time-shifting domain of the nascent PVR industry. On the one hand, such technology is migrating to the set-top through players such as ReplayTV (now part of SONICblue), Keen Personal Media and MetaByte TV, which have their own interest in VOD’s success.
A personalization engine that recommends titles could boost VOD sales, MetaByte Chief Executive Manu Mehta says.
On the other hand, VOD vendors themselves have a stake in the action. “The future of television is personal,” SeaChange International’s motto, suggests as much. But all the major VOD systems are promoting VCR-like control of on-demand viewing.
“Start looking at the ability of companies like ours to store massive amounts of content and deliver them seamlessly to someone at a click,” nCUBE Chief Michael Pohl says. “You move the TiVo/Replay concept to a headend…at (which) point you can select whatever you want to watch.”
What’s the hitch? “It’s just a matter of configuring the set-top and getting a program guide that has the ability to show people what’s there,” Pohl says.
Ah, the all-powerful IPG, that valuable and increasingly busy piece of set-top real estate. While Gemstar-TVGuide continues to lead this pack, Worldgate is making headway among its MSO partners. In his ITV survey, Ciciora also includes guides from Source Media, Scientific-Atlanta, Pioneer, Microsoft (via Gemstar-TV Guide license), Tribune and iSurfTV.
iSurfTV belies the notion that all intellectual property associated with IPGs has been seized. CEO Gene Ferolia says iSurfTV has filed more than 70 patents, the first of which was issued in March. What’s unique about this IPG?
“It’s the multimedia aspect,” Ferolia says. Specifically, it offers the ability to see pictures, descriptions, logos and even video in a three-dimensional format.
Ferolia says that the company’s SurfLine cross-platform application engine and open APIs allow the guide to enhance existing middleware without difficulty.
Synergy revisited
Retention and revenue are the primary motivations for ITV, Ciciora says. To attain those goals, he gives IPGs, VOD and enhanced advertising top billing.
The Internet is a riskier proposition, he says. Additional work in the software-interfacing and program-dealmaking departments, as discussed previously, may help reduce that risk.
Ciciora says optimizing IPGs, PVRs and fast Internet access will maximize ITV’s impact, thus implying a migration path from today’s “walled garden” approach to something much less restricted.
Deploying walled gardens and thin-client apps on today’s boxes is challenging–and fills a market need. The future, however, at least as crafted by CableLabs’ Open Cable Applications Platform (OCAP), aligns with Ciciora’s vision of maximized impact.
“It’s pretty clear, if you’ve seen that set of specifications, that it is an extremely thick client,” Motorola’s DuBreuil says. At that end of the technology spectrum, with a full portfolio of bundled apps, the synergy should really start flying.