How can we persuade viewers to invest more in a higher specified STB?
José Luis Vázquez, Mirada
We first need to make a point about the Red Button. We at Mirada have two types of customers. One we call the First Window and they want to be digital. They may be analogue or moving towards digital. We offer them programming guides, digital services, programme recommendations, and offer them enhanced interactivity. The Second Window takes place when they have transitioned from the First Window and are now ready for more sophisticated forms of interactivity, including games and gaming, information and news, and polling. There is a big debate in Europe about the pros and cons of interactivity and asking how consumers can be encouraged to buy higher level boxes. There is a benefit obviously for the consumer but it is not so cheap. The fact is that this is a challenge. Some consumers will buy the better box because it has interactivity and they want the maximum number of channels and they want to be ready for HD. But with a Zap box, you might not even get the EPG. Look at the Italian market where people are buying MHP equipped boxes. Why? The answer is because it allows them access to pay TV. But what people tend not to buy is pure interactivity. People buy enhanced content. It's sad, but a fact. People are not looking for interactivity, what they want is more content. They want more television and a better experience from television and nothing more than that.
Ian Valentine, Miniweb
This is crucially important. Many IPTV operators believe that their interactivity is a platform differentiator. It isn't. This is a lesson that platform operators need to learn and learn fast. At Sky, we had a huge debate in 2004 over interactivity [which resulted in them] subsequently allowing Miniweb Interactive to be spun out from Sky. The acceptance is that consumers did not buy Sky because of Sky Interactive. They bought Sky because of movies and sport and channel choice. The interactivity that came with some channels allowed them to monetise services but not as a way to gain more subscribers. If there is more content, there is more opportunity to monetise that content. Having standards and inter-operability on the interactive side means that there will be content and that broadcasters can have a call to action to use the content with the Red Button. But operators and device suppliers will not benefit. If an IPTV operator chooses a technology that is completely narrow and does not inter-operate with other services, then his platform will be devoid of content. And there will be little or no interactive revenues.
Paul Entwistle, Pace
There is a real opportunity for content creators here. If you look at where people may actually be searching for video to watch, and your ability is just to search and watch, then it will be important for interactivity to surround the content that the end user is watching. It may just be a social group that shares information about a TV programme they may be watching. But interactivity at this inclusive level and focusing on the type of media that they are consuming will become very important. I think it is a huge opportunity for content creators. For us as manufacturers, we need platforms and technologies that do not just decode video but handle all the portfolio of interactive media that flows around, in a very rich way, the video. We are already used to this on the PC and we need to get it onto the television.
Huw Price-Stephens, Amino
Drawing a few of these strands together, I am not sure if Ian's view that the interactivity has to be controlled by the primary service provider, because in an IP environment you can build these social interactions for these communities independently by using interactivity that might be coming from the service provider as well as others. The service provider indirectly benefits because it makes the overall offering more compelling to people although the primary service provider does not have to be quite so closely involved in creating these additional services. I am interested to find out from Ian how much the primary service provider should charge for carrying that interactive experience?
Ian Valentine, Miniweb
I agree with you. I do not believe you should have a closed environment where one entity controls the interactivity. The reason I said interactivity is important is because it is a fundamental difference between broadcast and broadband. In order to find something on the broadband connected TV device, you have to search, you have to interact. Indeed interactivity is a pre-requisite of getting the entertainment you want. The Open IPTV Forum has an interesting view about internet distribution, saying that there is a service provider that provides a managed service that happens to be over the open internet. I would go so far as to be rebelling from that a little. I think there is a school of devices where there is no service provider, where actually content on the internet designed for TV will inter-operate and that devices connected into the home network will be able to find that content through a mechanism. I see it as being a pre-requisite that such systems are more ‘open' than having a service provider and the reason I believe it must be ‘open' is because fundamentally broadcasters are competing with the open internet for advertising revenues. Unless you have a very open platform with lots of content and mass market inter-operability, then that ecosystem of destinations which can provide the interactive advertising will not emerge.
Chris Forrester
Does the STB need a high degree of functionality?
Ian Valentine, Miniweb
I don't believe it needs a high degree of functionality. Much of the work in my life has been to ensure interactivity protocols which work on a Sky box which has very limited memory and very limited CPU. So long as you understand what you are trying to deliver and that you decode video in hardware, the zapper level of boxes today usually with the cheapest amount of RAM and Flash that you can buy and the cheapest of chip sets can support this kind of interactivity. We are not talking about middleware here, we are talking about basic compatibility with internet protocols and infrastructure. It can be done.
Paul Entwistle, Pace
But we also have to remember that the PC industry is setting a benchmark for this. And they are using high performance technologies and things like Adobe Flash and providing HD and rendering some very impressive interactive content and video. As a technologist working for a STB manufacturer I certainly believe there will be a push for making this level of interactivity available on our platforms. Interactivity doesn't necessarily require it but with it, it becomes a very rich environment. The consumer is seeing it already on a PC and will expect it replicated on the TV set.
Ian Valentine, Miniweb
Paul has hit on the heart of a major debate in the industry. For example with Adobe making Flash available free of licence, this, I believe, will be the nail in the coffin for people who are trying to licence technologies for interactivity. We have to learn the lessons from the web, not every website is written in Adobe Flash. The least common denominator that is needed has to deliver the kind of sexy end result that consumers expect from their TV. Look at a Microsoft Media front end, you are looking at a PC but it is a very simple set of menus and options. The reason people like the device is that it zings and jumps and throbs and fades and looks good. At the moment Miniweb is sponsoring a piece of work at the DVB which delivers those user interface effects in an XML markup language so that the user experience remains as good as on a PC or a Mac. But you don't need to write everything in something like Adobe Flash, falling back on markup language.
Paul Entwistle, Pace
I wholly agree. It is technology doing what it is supposed to be doing and making good quality presentations in the most efficient way it can.
