Interactive Television

Interactive Television is an umbrella term that used to address any two-way, data-driven or user-controlled TV service. The only common feature is that most are available from a standard monitor.

iTV includes, among others:
1. Walled Garden services— enclosed suites of services offered by a service provider;
2. Enhanced TV or prosynchronous (prosync) content— applications running in real-time over standard programming;
3. DVR services -- content and applications aimed at the network side of the consumer’s hard drive;
4. Portal or Data services via dedicated xml feeds for data such as sports stats, movie times or weather;
5. Interactive Advertising opps including RFIs (Requests for Information), Lead Generation, and Telescoping Ads.

The most high profile are pro-sync apps running as overlays for major series. The holy grail of these was the famous “Jennifer Aniston’s sweater” app, in which product placement would be tied to a transaction app, allowing sale of any item appearing on-screen.

Upside: Television is the most ubiquitous form of media on the planet, and services available from this box enjoy a huge potential audience. The visceral connection consumers feel with their TVs is enormous, creating a huge advantage for services which come into the living room rather than the home office or desktop.

Downside: iTV services are often regional trials, without national distribution. So a great piece of interactive TV can -- and very often does -- disappear without a trace. For this reason satellite has enjoyed some advantage over cable in iTV, since their footprint is national rather than regional.

European are the clear leaders in this area, partially because the home Net install base is smaller than in the US. This provides European MSOs with an advantage in web staples like home banking via iTV.

However, simple-message iTV apps such as Mosaic channels and sports apps populated with real-time xml data have provided a useful and easy-to-naviagte experience in US iTV that may open doors in the minds of American consumers.