DirecTV Launches Interactive TV Channel to Aid Hurricane Victims

–Channel Features Text-Messaging Service, Powered by GoldPocket

Satellite TV provider, DirecTV, has launched a dedicated 24/7 channel (channel 100 on the DirecTV EPG) to provide information about Hurricane Katrina relief and recovery efforts to evacuees and others. The channel allows customers of any US wireless carrier to send text messages (using the shortcode 48433) to friends and family separated as a result of the hurricane and its aftermath, and scrolls those messages across the bottom of the TV screen. Viewers can also email their messages to katrina@directv.com. DirecTV says that it is working with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the Red Cross to install its television service at the Houston Astrodome (where it will appear on jumbotron screens) and other temporary shelters throughout the Gulf Coast region, in order to ensure that the channel is available to those who need it most; the company says that it is also working to ensure that local, state and federal officials are aware of the availability of the channel as a means of communicating with hurricane refugees. The channel provides around 40 rotating slides on, among other things: road closures throughout the Gulf region; counties/parishes in the Gulf region that are able to assist evacuees; the locations and phone numbers of special needs shelters in Louisiana; shelter openings throughout the Gulf region; insurance company contact information; and relief agency contact information (including the phone numbers of the Red Cross, the Salvation Army, and Feed the Children). The information on the slides is gathered from a variety of sources, including FEMA, the Red Cross, and the New Orleans Times- Picayune newspaper. In addition to informational slides, the channel broadcasts live pool feeds of official announcements about relief efforts.

The channel’s text-messaging service is powered by GoldPocket Wireless’s EM Connect technology which the company is providing free of charge: "GoldPocket’s technology automatically plugged into our Pinnacle Deko real-time graphics system, and into a template that we are using that already had a scroll on it," DirecTV’s SVP of advanced services and content, Eric Shanks, told [itvt] earlier today. "We called them yesterday afternoon, and we were up and running in less than three hours." [itvt] asked Shanks how the idea for the new channel had come about: "We had a meeting yesterday, and my boss, David Hill [president of the DirecTV Entertainment Group], had the idea that we should do something to help the hurricane victims that we are in a unique position to do, rather than just donating money or just giving people credits on their bills. [Note: DirecTV has suspended billing of customers in the regions affected by the hurricane, and has also instituted a matching program for employee donations.] So we decided we would use some of our infrastructure to help aid agencies and officials communicate with people affected by the disaster, and also to allow those people to communicate with each other. As you know, a massive number of people are currently unable to communicate with their loved ones, because phone service is largely down in the Gulf region. So we started gathering information from FEMA, the Red Cross and other entities, we called GoldPocket to see how quickly they could set us up to allow people to text in messages to loved ones, and we began programming an information channel. We set up a full control center here in Marina del Rey with a producer, director, technical director and other TV crew, and we now have producers filtering all the incoming text messages and emails, and putting them in the queue for GoldPocket’s tool to publish on the channel."

[itvt] asked Shanks how the response to the new channel has been so far: "We went on the air at 6:00PM Pacific time yesterday, with just the informational part of the channel, and then at 10:00PM we started airing slides that let people know about the channel’s text-messaging and email service," he said. "I wasn’t expecting to see much response until the morning, but, even though it was the wee hours of the night, hundreds of messages had already been sent in by 6:00AM this morning." Shanks added that, while DirecTV’s public relations representatives have started to aggressively promote the channel and its communications service, he believes much of its traffic has been generated by word-of-mouth on discussion boards on Nola.com (the Web site of the New Orleans Times-Picayune) and other sites. "People are desperate to get word out to their loved ones by any means they can," he said. Shanks also told us that DirecTV will tonight begin cross-promoting the new channel on its other channels.

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New Study Claims Sales of Media Center PC’s Soaring

According to a recent study by the analyst firm, Current Analysis, sales of Microsoft Windows Media Center PC’s have skyrocketed since July 9th: during the week ended August 20th, the study claims, Media Center PC’s accounted for 43% of all desktop computers sold in the US retail market, based on data from a sampling of US retailers. Current Analysis attributes the rapid increase in Media Center sales largely to a decline in the platform’s price: for the first time ever, its average retail price has dropped below $900. The company also credits Microsoft’s promotional efforts for the platform at select retailers. Among other findings of the study: 71% of the Media Centers sold in the week ended August 20th did not have a TV tuner; 53% of the Media Centers sold that week utilized AMD’s Athlon 64 processor; and 67% of Media Centers sold that week were equipped with a 250GB hard drive. "The desktop market is in dire need of anything that will differentiate it from laptops, which have been stealing sales over the last year," Current Analysis’s senior director of research, Matt Sargent, said in a prepared statement. "Media Center, with its focus on performance-centric tasks, such as manipulating pictures, video and audio content, is one key differentiator. The continued success of the desktop form factor is reliant upon the success of Media Center–this is the reason we are seeing leading manufacturers such as HP rapidly shift their desktop offerings to Media Center."

A number of video content providers are betting on the Media Center’s success, including news service Reuters, which offers a multiscreen interactive TV news channel on the platform, and Akimbo, which next month will begin offering its niche VOD service on the platform.

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Internet Streaming Media Alliance Forms IPTV Workgroup

The Internet Streaming Media Alliance (ISMA)–an organization that bills itself as "a global alliance of industry leaders dedicated to the adoption and deployment of open standards for streaming rich media such as video, audio, and associated data over Internet protocols"–has formed an IPTV workgroup. The goals of the workgroup are to monitor developing standards or specifications for deploying an IPTV system, to create an interoperability-conformance program for IPTV, and to promote solutions that pass conformance testing. According to the ISMA, the workgroup will hold monthly meetings, and its activities will include selecting the best standard, "where appropriate for the considered areas when standards are available"; "working closely with other entities to reach a common solution when they are working in a considered area"; "engaging in promotional activities, focused on interoperable open standards that are deployable in this area, and the member products that support them"; and "developing a brand new specification when no solution exists and no other entity is currently working in that area." In a prepared statement, Jean-Francois Fleury, the chairman of the IPTV Workgroup, explained why the ISMA decided to set it up: "IPTV deployments relying on proprietary solutions for one carrier network may not be applicable to another network. This creates additional development and integration costs for all the players such as carriers, headend providers, network equipment providers, and set-top box providers. Recognizing a clear need for standardization in many areas, the ISMA has created an IPTV work group to recognize and promote interoperable solutions where multi- vendor competition can be assured."

Companies currently participating in the IPTV workgroup include AOL, Cisco, Envivio, IBM, Philips, Optibase and Thomson. Companies and individuals interested in participating in the ISMA and its workgroups can find more information on its Web site (www.isma.tv) or by calling 415 561 6276.

GlobeVISION Taps thePlatform’s Media Publishing System for IPTV Service

Los Angeles-based GlobeVISION has selected the Media Publishing System (MPS) from thePlatform, a Seattle-based provider of multiplatform video publishing technologies and services, to enable the delivery of programming for a planned IPTV service that will be targeted at Asian immigrants in North America. GlobeVISION, which plans to begin a trial of the service in November, and which hopes to launch it commercially in the second quarter of next year, says that the service will provide a range of subscription-based and pay-per-view VOD content, including high-definition movies. The service will employ specially designed set-top boxes from Korea-based icube.

According to thePlatform, MPS will allow GlobeVISION to aggregate VOD content from multiple providers and deliver it via broadband in multiple formats and bitrates; it also claims that MPS will make it easy for GlobeVISION to associate rich metadata with content, so that customers can more easily discover content that interests them. It says that MPS will enable GlobeVISION to streamline the entire video publishing process, including content ingest and management (allowing GlobeVISION to aggregate content from multiple providers, as well as import content metadata from media files or add metadata to media objects that can store multiple media files in different formats and bit rates); content policy and business rules (allowing GlobeVISION to specify rules for its video content via MPS’s built-in support for Windows Media DRM 10); publishing (thePlatform claims that MPS will automatically publish content in the correct formats, size and bit- rate: GlobeVISION plans to deliver its content in a variety of formats, including VC-1, MPEG-2 and MPEG-4); and reporting (thePlatform says that MPS’s built-in reporting capability will provide GlobeVISION with detailed reports on the quality of end-user experiences, including which content is most popular). In addition, thePlatform says, MPS includes a software development kit that will allow it to be integrated with GlobeVISION’s notification services and internal and third-party billing, credit card processing and authentication systems: according to the company, MPS offers a set of Web services-based interfaces that enable automation and customization of all aspects of the media publishing process.

OpenTV to Integrate Mediabolic Software for Multi-Room PVR Solution

Liberty Media-owned interactive TV middleware and applications provider, OpenTV, has signed a multi-year license agreement with home networking company, Mediabolic, that will see it integrating the latter’s Media Player and Media Server software with its Core Middleware. The resulting OpenTV home networking solution, which OpenTV is calling "OpenTV HN," will allow network operators to deploy multi-room PVR service that will support remote recording and that will allow end-users to access photo and music files located on a PC from any networked set-top box. OpenTV says that the solution will support, among other things, simultaneous recording and networked playback of multiple streams, pausing and instant rewind of live TV, recording of scheduled events and series recording, recording and playback of interactive TV applications, set-top box-based ad telescoping, and API’s for enabling interactive applications to control PVR functions. The company says it expects to begin offering the solution in mid-2006.

Recreate Solutions Sets Up Offshore Testing Farm for Sky/OpenTV Apps

UK-headquartered Recreate Solutions, which provides outsourcing services to a number of well-known interactive TV companies (including YooMedia and Visiware), has set up an Offshore Testing Farm for Sky/OpenTV applications. The testing farm, which is located in Mumbai (Bombay), India, will cover 44 set-top models and will provide a broadcast environment based on Softel’s MediaSphere ITV carousel products. It will be used to provide offshore test facilities for applications to be launched on Sky by Recreate’s clients, and is thus set up to take into account the requirements of Sky Subscriber Services Limited (SSSL), the Sky unit which must approve all applications on the Sky platform. According to Recreate, testing typically accounts for around 25% of the overall effort involved in developing ITV applications, and, as a result, the new set-top box farm will significantly reduce the cost of application development. In addition, the company claims that the new farm will speed up the testing process, as it can draw on a pool of in OpenTV and C developers (most of whom have been trained in-house) to run multiple shifts, if required. Recreate says that it plans to extend the test farm to cover other platforms in addition to OpenTV/Sky, and that it is in talks with several leading US operators about replicating their test set-ups in India. "This is in line with our providing quality offshore services, enabling lowering the cost of launch of interactive solutions," Recreate CEO, Bhaskar Majumdar, said in a statement emailed to [itvt]. "Testing is an integral part of the launch process and now, besides providing developmental services, we are looking at setting up testing facilities for the leading international networks."

Weather Channel Using TVN’s TVNow Service to Offer Katrina VOD Special

–Companies have Just Signed a Multi-Year VOD Services Agreement

VOD distribution services provider, TVN Entertainment, says that its TVNow rapid-turnaround service, which is designed to enable programs to be transformed into VOD assets within hours of their broadcast, is being used by The Weather Channel to offer a special VOD presentation of its coverage of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. The special presentation includes clips of Weather Channel meteorologists’ coverage of the development of the hurricane from August 25th-29th, as well as video of the hurricane’s landfall on the Gulf Coast, and its aftermath (note: some of the special’s video footage did not air on The Weather Channel’s linear channel).

TVN and The Weather Channel–which have just signed a multi-year VOD services agreement (note: The Weather Channel’s VOD offering will be anchored by its signature series, "Storm Stories")–say that they decided to collaborate on the Hurricane Katrina special because of the "timing of the deal and public interest in the story."

BBC Director-General Formally Announces “MyBBCPlayer”

In a speech at the Edinburgh International Television Festival last week, BBC director-general, Mark Thompson, stressed that the BBC’s survival is dependent on it adapting to an on-demand and interactive television universe, and formally announced plans to roll out MyBBCPlayer, a long-awaited service that will provide consumers in the UK with on-demand access to BBC TV and radio programs from the previous week, as well as access to archival video, national and local news content, and music (note: as well as on-demand content, the service is expected to feature a Web simulcast of BBC One or BBC Two).

"I accept the premise that if the BBC remains nothing more than a traditional TV and radio broadcaster, then we probably won’t deserve or get license fee funding beyond 2016," Thompson said. "As I’ve tried to make as clear as I can over the past year, however, that is very definitely not our plan…We believe that on-demand changes the terms of the debate, indeed that it will change what we mean by the word ‘broadcasting’. It’s not, of course, the only feature of this phase of digital, but we believe it’s by far the most important as far as the BBC is concerned. This decade will be the decade of on-demand. And we will arrive at a digital Britain not when we switch analog terrestrial TV to digital–though that’s important as well of course–but when every household has access to rich and interactive on-demand services…In 2006–of course subject to scrutiny and approval from our Governors and all necessary consents–we hope to launch a new offering with the working title of MyBBCPlayer, a window through which license-payers will be able to access a host of BBC content. The last seven days’ worth of programs from BBC Television and Radio. A bigger range of international, national and local news content than we could ever get into a single bulletin. And an ever-expanding proportion of the BBC’s sound and video archive. The BBC’s core mission is to create great audio-visual content and to deliver it to the public as effectively and conveniently as it can. The mission transcends any one technical delivery system. That’s why the BBC reached beyond radio to television in 1936. Why it saw the potential of the Web to enhance some of its public purposes in the 1990s. That’s why it’s a category error today to define or delimit the BBC around linear real-time TV and radio."

Thompson also mentioned that, in its preparations for the emerging on-demand television universe, the BBC is working on search, navigation and branding "with partners like Google and Autonomy," and on "digital rights solutions" with "partners like Microsoft and Kontiki."

EchoStar Relaunches DISH Home ITV Portal with Six-Screen Mosaic

US satellite TV provider, EchoStar (offers service under the brand, DISH Network), has relaunched its DISH Home interactive TV portal. Instead of a text-based menu of interactive services, the portal now presents viewers with seven selectable icons at the bottom of the screen that allow them to access DISH Network’s interactive customer-service, news, shopping, sports, games, and entertainment applications respectively, or to exit the portal. More significantly, the portal now offers a multiscreen application that currently allows viewers to switch between feeds from six news, weather and entertainment channels– CNN, MSNBC, The Weather Channel, E! Entertainment, Bloomberg and Court TV–displayed against a full-motion video background. Viewers can use the arrow keys on their remotes to highlight each of the channels: when a channel is highlighted its audio feed can be heard. When viewers select one of the channels, it automatically goes into full-screen mode. In addition, the portal now offers a clickable banner in the top right hand corner of the screen, which supports full-motion video (though not audio), and which can be linked with an interactive Dedicated Advertiser Location (DAL), similar to those offered by the Sky satellite platform in the UK.

The portal, which also provides an informational ticker, is accessed by tuning to channel 100, by pressing an "interactive TV" button on the DISH Network remote, by launching it from the EPG, or by selecting a triggered advertisement on another channel. The revamp of the portal builds on one-off six-screen mosaics that EchoStar offered during the 2004 Summer Olympics and the 2004 presidential election. Like those mosaics, the revamped DISH Home portal was developed by OpenTV, whose middleware forms the basis of DISH Network’s interactive TV services. The latter built the portal to be reconfigurable, which means that EchoStar can refresh the six mosaic mini-screens, the text ticker, the portal’s banner ad, its video background and its interactive menu listings with new content at any time. According to DISH Network’s director of interactive TV, Scott Higgins, the company plans to take full advantage of the new portal’s reconfigurability: "If there’s some special event that makes it worthwhile for us to do so, we will pre-empt the news feeds, and offer alternative coverage of that event from each of the feeds–just as we did with the Olympics or the election," he told [itvt]. "We also plan to take advantage of the ticker to sometimes offer news, communicate to our customers, or whatever else might benefit the customer. We can also use the banner sometimes to run promotions for DISH Network services–for example, inviting people to sign up for a new DISH DVR–or to run advertisements from third parties."