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Information, Magazines and Classifieds Applications
From the most basic of weather applications to magazines, news portals and even interactive traffic maps, interactive information services are a key part of the offering of many digital operators around the world.
France
Chaine Meteo on Canal Satellite (OpenTV) (11 Mb)
La Chaine Meteo has launched a
new interactive weather service to French homes receiving
the Canal Satellite bouquet.
The service
running on Mediahighway has been developed by Pixtel (http://www.pixtel.fr) and is offering a more
personalised service than the previous incarnation of the
application. The new service also allows the viewer to
access detailed information without leaving the video of
the main weather channel.
Services include local weather for more than 36,000
regions accessible by using an on-screen keyboard to
search for your chosen location, this location can then
be memorised for the next time you enter the service
giving the viewer faster access.
NB: Unlike Sky, Canal Satellite other European operators
allow channels and developers to use small amounts of box
memory to store personalised information in the same way
as web cookies. Sky currently prohibits this activity -
forcing developers to use a connection to personalise
content.
The service is a departure from many of the services in
Continental Europe as it has been designed to be revenue
generating. Access to detailed forecasts and other
premium information is charged at 56 Euro cents per call
with the set-top-box making a drop-call connection. It
remains to be seen whether other content providers will
follow suit.
Other services in the application include national
weather charts, traffic information at for both national
roads and the Paris regions, Snow Reports for over 70
resorts, plus webcams throughout France updated several
times a day. In summer - the snow reports will be
replaced by beach reports.
Interestingly, the service stands out from many other
Mediahighway applications as the content is effectively
being drawn on screen as the viewer waits, background and
icons build-up element by element, giving the viewer the
impressing that something is happening and they are about
to be rewarded.
An interesting approach which may result in viewers
complaining less about waiting times!
Greece
Weather on Nova (Multichoice Hellas) (OpenTV) (609k)
Fast to load and very intuitive
and simple to use, Nova's Weather service provides
graphic weather charts for Greece covering
"today" and "tomorrow", plus also
offers localised forecasts for the major Greek cities.
The local city forecasts are quickly accessed by pressing OK when the application is in either "today" or "tomorrow" mode.
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Taiwan
Traffic Status Report (OpenTV) (2.02 Mb)
Broadcast
on channel 631 the traffic status report service offers
viewers the latest updates from 2 high ways and major
overpass/express roads in Taipei city.
The service provides traffic pictures sourced directly from websites of National Freeway bureau and Dept. of Transportation of Taipei city. Images are updated every 3 min.
The aim of the service is to let users avoid traffic before that go out and is, according to EMC, expected to be extremely useful in the holiday seasons. The application was developed by EMC's engineers using OpenTV SDK in just 3 days.
Taiwan
EMC's TV News service (OpenTV) (2.3 Mb)
EMC's
interactive news service on channel 601 provides news,
weather and lottery information and leverages the
resources of the popular 24hr cable news channel that
forms part of their group. Once again the service has
been created in OpenTV SDK by EMC's engineers and is
designed to be updated every hour.
New Zealand
Weather Channel on Sky NZ (OpenTV) (6.5 Mb)
Sky New Zealand's 'Weather
Channel', was developed using 'GadgetMill', an XML based application
creation environment created by local OpenTV developer
Oktobor.
The service, created in partnership with local data provider MetService is one of the most comprehensive weather applications I have seen and allows Sky New Zealand's digital viewers to access up to the minute weather information including national and regional forecasts, radar and satellite maps, moon movements, tides and other marine information.
Oktobor was recently recognised with the Craft Award at the national TUANZ Interactive Awards 2002 for their work on this application.
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Comments, Views and Perspectives
Looking for comments, views and perspectives on the interactive televison business? Why not contact the Broadband Bananas co-founders? See our profiles here.
Italy
Borsa
ITV on Stream (OpenTV) (2.59 Mb)
Stream's
first interactive channel completely dedicated to
strictly real time financial information (Borsa ITV) has
been running since '99.
It is a very complete
source of information that satisfies both the first time
investor as much as the most expert with a constantly
up-to-date, reliable, complete and detailed set of data
concerning stock market, funds, futures, share indexes,
historical graphs and more.
A small financial calculator can be
activated in any moment to help users to check the
portfolio state and a rich glossary can be used to verify
the meaning of the most common financial terms.
National and international news are
continuously updated to report the most important events
of the financial and economical world. In spite of the
richness of this iTV channel, the access to desired
information is very simple and intuitive so anyone can
find his/her own bearings very quickly.
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Italy
New
Meteo ITV on Stream (OpenTV) (3 Mb)
The
iTV weather forecast channel is one of the most
frequently consulted services in Stream's bouquet. The
recent re-design of the whole service has added
completely new features, improved the user interface and
enriched all the available information adding, for
example, the Real Feel Temperature, the UV factor, the
sea conditions, the snow situation for skiers, pollution
indexes, pollen survey and more.
Updated every hour, the service shows detailed information about every italian province and the most important cities through out the world. Full screen satellite images are also available to animate the evolution of the weather in the last hours.
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Turkey
TV Hava (Weather) on Digiturk (OpenTV) ( 7.5 Mb)
This is one of the fastest
loading and most comprehensive iTV weather services we
have seen.
It doesn't have such a clean design as for instance the TPS Meteo service has. However the navigation of the service is very fluid. Interestingly, unlike a number of other OpenTV platforms, Digiturk doesn't have colour keys and so the user must navigate using up,down,left,right, OK and Back keys only!
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Latin America
Lagardere's Elle Services on DirecTV Latin America (OpenTV)
These services follow an almost
similar content and design approach as Lagardere's
services in the French market. (see below) and indeed
some such as Elle Cocina are virtually identical in terms
of design, content and navigation.
All services are accessed via a portal on the DirecTV LA STB.
Interestingly the richness of the application design and the speed of the application are more than adequate, despite the fact that the boxes in this marketplace are some of the lowest specified OpenTV STB's in the world.
Another particularly interesting point is that these iTV services are provided both in Spanish and Portuguese.
Elle Belleza (Beauty) (4.25 Mb)
Elle Cocina (Cuisine) (1.95 Mb)
Elle Astrologia (Astrology) (3.4 Mb)
Enciclopedia dos Vinhos do Mundo (World Wine Encylopedia)
(3.7 Mb)
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UK
UK Online on Sky Digital (OpenTV) (8Mb)
Wednesday
17th April 2002 saw the launch of the UK Government's UK
Online service over Sky Digital with its own dedicated
space on the interactive menu.
Currently UK iTV agency Channelbay are responsible for the hosting of the service, Editorial is managed directly by UK online through Channelbay's "Loadingbay" product.
BSkyB's
WapTV team provide their enhanced WML microbrowser and
dial back network to the Office of the e-Envoy for the
delivery of government services.
The UK Online portal has launched initially with some
simple online editorial, but will soon be expanded to
link through to relevant and localised central and local
government services and other aggregated content.
A blanket
commercial model has been agreed for any non commercial
.gov.uk domain to have a presence on the platform through
the portal.
Many e-government initiatives are now being converted to
WTVML for launch through the portal, as no commercial
barriers exist and services can be developed as part of
any e-government internet infrastructure.
In its present form, the set-top-box must be connected to the phone line to access the portal with calls charged at the local rate + 1 pence per minute.
Scandinavia
Zonavi iTV Portal on Canal Digital (Mediahighway) (2.4 Mb)
This portal allows viewers to
play games, purchase mobile phone ringtones, read
dynamically updated news stories from one on the most
popular Scandinavian newspapers VG and check out the
latest weather across Scandinavia and the rest of the
world.
Zonavi have created a single service using IDP's RegieLine tool, but the RL technology allows them to deliver seperate Swedish, Norwegian and Danish versions without having to duplicate any elements of the application.
The same technology will be used to deliver their FIFA 2002 World Cup service.
More info available from: pearse@zonavi.com
Italy
Telepiu Meteo (MediaHighway) (1MB)
The Telepiu Meteo service follows
the same design principles of all the main Telepiu iTV
services - This is primarily due to the limited
functionality that exists in Canal Plus Technologies
authoring tool - Studio+.
However, the saving grace is that the application is relatively fast to launch on Telepiu's Gold Box decoders.
Strangely the banner advertisement for Sitcom doesn't link to a specific advertiser page, selecting the banner once highlighted has absolutely no effect.
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Poland
Cyfra+ Pogoda (Weather) (Mediahighway) (5Mb)
Created in IDP's RegieLine tool,
Cyfra+'s weather application allows viewers to consult
local weather charts, plus forcasts for major towns and
cities - but is enhanced further by a range of extensive
satellite maps which are updated dynamically throughout
the day.
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Australia
Austar iDaily News (OpenTV) (5.37Mb)
Leveraging a number of
regularly updated content sources, iDaily provides
Austar's subscribers with access to News, Sports, Finance
and Entertainment as well as a very popular horoscopes
service.
The iDaily application also crosslinks to the the iWeather application.
The only downside to the service is the current lack of images related to the content, however Austar like many satellite operators may have already calculated the bandwidth cost implications when it comes to delivering graphically rich applications! An issue we all share!
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Australia
Austar's iWeather Service (OpenTV) (5.15Mb)
It's
hard to find a digital television without its own weather
service (I think Showtime in the Middle East is the
exception - but then its sunny every day in the Middle
East!) Austar are offering a clearly designed and
comprehensive service that offers maps, surf reports,
world weather and 4 day forcasts and many other features.
Recently launched (although not featured in this video)
is the ability to receive a local forcast by inputting
your postcode.
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UK
Horoscope on Open.... (OpenTV) (Offline, Available on Request)
Beyond a basic 1 day
Horoscope service which is provided free of charge as a
"hook" - the majority of this service is
"pay per view" at 25p per minute.
Premium rate telephony information services have played a part in the lives of many English people since the mid 1980's. With telephone bills still fairly high for most homes compared to other European countries there seems to be less of a resistance in the UK to the use of this method of payment. The charges often go unoticed until it is too late - these kind of charges tend to get lost in the pages and pages of the phone bill, and with billing in most cases on a quarterly basis, quite a bill can be run up before it is too late with limited accountability to the service operator.
Indeed premium rate telephony would appear to be the most effective way of extracting "micro-payments" from digital satellite homes, at least in the UK.
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Scandinavia
Viasat Weather (OpenTV) (5.36Mb)
Accessed from the Viasat portal, this
application developed by Agency.com provides detailed
regionalised weather information from across Scandinavia
and also employs an animated satellite map.
Animated maps can been seen in other markets and liven up weather applications which can seem to be a little static and boring. The animated map is used to good effect in France on TPS's weather application.
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Spain
Aeropuertos on Via Digital (OpenTV) (3.6Mb)
The
interactive application Aeropuertos available on Vía
Digital makes it possible to consult arrivals and
departures at Spanish airports.
Content is supplied by AENA (the national
air traffic administration of Spain) and is updated every
15 minutes.
France
Elle Cuisine, Parents, Automoto (Mediahighway) (1.2, 1.7, 1.7Mb)
One of a range of "virtual
magazines" produced by French publisher Lagardere ,
Elle Cuisine provides an example of the commercial
opportunity in repurposing content from printed press or
online services onto digital television.
Other services include advice for Parents and Car Reviews in Auto Moto.
Spain
Tiempo Via Digital (OpenTV) (6.2Mb)
Produced by TVC Multimedia, this interactive
weather forecast application makes it possible to consult
the weather forecast for cities in Spain and the rest of
the world, as well as to consult forecast maps and the
most recent images from the Meteosat satellite. In
addition viewers can consult snow information in winter
and the seaside weather in the summer.
Content is supplied by SAM and is updated every 2 hours.
UK
Sky Digital Teletext (OpenTV) (3Mb)
Traditional
analogue teletext is a highly successful business in the
UK reaching the majority of TV homes.
Sky were quick off the mark in the analogue world, offering a teletext service long before their DTH launch on Astra in 1989. However, the recently launched digital version not only offers easier navigation and richer graphics, it also offers a much wider range of services including email and betting which make good use of the return path.
UK
ITN Interactive News on NTL (Liberate)
Produced on the
Liberate platform, the HTML basis of this service is
clearly evident in the wrapping of text and overall
design - but nevertheless it offers simple navigation. As
with all the NTL services at present - there is little or
no control over the audio and video window resulting in
distracting and confusing messages regardless of what
service you are using.
France
Comete Horoscope (OpenTV) (1.31 MB)
Produced
by Paris Based Classified Advertising and Information
application specialist Minisat - Comete Horoscope has an
innovative circular navigation wheel which makes
selection of the correct star sign very simple.
Banner advertising leads people to revenue generating telephone services - but for now the rest of the service is free to the home viewer.
France
TPS Meteo Express (OpenTV) (5.8Mb)
Mostly unchanged
in terms of design since its launch a number of years
ago, TPS's Meteo Express application still stands out for
its relatively fast loading times and clear and effective
design.
Bold colours, easy to read text and immediate access to information make an extremely effective application.
As the most popular application on TPS, and one that is very much perceived as conventional TV channel amongst subscribers, TPS have exploited the reach and commercial opportunity by generating revenue through sponsorship/advertising splash screens with not just one - but multiple sponsors!
Interestingly the Beach and Holiday weather sections also carry local information and tips associated with each destination.
The satellite map 24 hour animation is also "very cool"!
France
Ete Foot (Mediahighway) (Offline - Available on Request)
This application proves RegieLine's
suitability for the cost effective delivery of a broad
range of interactive applications for short periods of
time. This application provides a biography of Zidane, a
magazine style guide to the forthcoming football season,
a quiz plus a link to the Canal Sat boutique so viewers
can purchase Zidane merchandise.
France
Bonjour Classified Advertising (Mediahighway) (2.2Mb)
Browse Houses, Cars and other general
items for sale on this database driven application on
Canal Satellite.
Each day 600 hundred new ads are updated and broadcast automatically.
Built using IDP's RegieLine Cross Platform Authoring Tool.
UK
BBC Digital Teletext - Sky Version (OpenTV) (3.7Mb)
The BBC's Digital
Teletext service has been up and running on the
terrestrial MHEG5 platform for over 1 year now, however
since early March 2001 the service has been additionally
made available to Sky Digital homes.
One interesting feature carried through from the DTT service is the ability to surf through selected BBC channels (Knowledge, Choice, News24) in a small window whilst continuing to use the text service.
Also I have to say that I very much like the navigation method - hit a coloured button and up comes a menu option you can toggle with up/down. Hit the coloured button again and the menu disappears!
France
NOOS Road Traffic (OpenTV) (2.9MB)
A live (updated every 5 mins) traffic map
of the city of Paris including the Ring Road with colour
coded overlays showing busy roads, closed roads,
accidents and roadworks. Also a journey planner giving
estimated journey times from
point "a" to point "b" and clever
features such as 3x zoom and a
map navigator in the bottom left hand side.
UK
Fish4 Classified Advertising (Liberate) (Offline - Available on Request)
This classified advertising
service provides very fast response times and in terms of
design is clean and uncluttered, despite the fact that
nearly 1/3 of the screen is taken by the NTL's video
window and banner which feature at the top of all their
applications.