Latens and Smart Choice Join for Irish IPTV Service

September 6, 2006 – Latens Systems, provider of IPTV Conditional Access (CA) in Europe, has today announced that it has signed a deal to supply the CA system for Irish telecom provider Smart Telecom’s SmartVision IPTV service. The contract follows the successful conclusion of a pilot of the Latens system with the Dublin-based operator.

"More Power to your Finger!"

This promo introduces and explain's the benefits of BBC's Six Nations Interactive service that is available on Sky Digital, and accessible via the Red button.

Go to the Sports Video Vault to see video of the live service.

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Sure West - IPTV Case Study

With roots going back 90 years, SureWest Communications is a recognized technology leader providing local telephone, long distance, Internet, wireless, digital TV and commercial high-speed data services in the greater Sacramento Metropolitan region, home to more than two million people and many thousands of businesses.

 SureWest Case Study

3rd May 2004 saw the BBC’s latest “Test the Nation – The National IQ Test”.

Attracting over 9 million viewers in 2002, the show’s format remains the same, and once again, has made use of their very simple but effective interactive application templates.

These allow Sky Digital and Digital Terrestrial viewers to participate in the show simultaneously using their remote controls to answer each question using one of the four corresponding colour keys on their remotes.

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Launched by pressing OK from the special 24 hour Big Brother channel (channel 37) on the Multichoice DTH platform, this full-screen application featured news from the Big Brother house, an overview of the tasks the contestants had to complete, a moderated forum featuring viewer comments and detailed profiles of the housemates.

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Lorraine Kelly is a UK "daytime" TV presenter. Her recently launched magazine programme on Sky One features a simple quiz with randomly selected showbiz trivia questions.

Get 5 out of 6 right and the STB connects (at a whopping 75 pence per minute!) for a further round of questions and the chance to win the prize.

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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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Eagle Broadband Selects Latens IPTV Conditional Access Technology for Security

September 5, 2006 – Latens Systems, provider of IPTV Conditional Access (CA), has announced that Eagle Broadband, a national provider of broadband, Internet Protocol (IP) and communications technology and services for the United States of America, has selected the Latens IP CAS Conditional Access solution to secure its advanced IPTV services.

MTV's recently launched interactive service to accompany the MTV Hits channel invites viewers to press red.

Interestingly there are no images of the actual iTV service in this promo.

It will be interesting to see if MTV follow this promo up with a more explicit statement of what you can actually do with their new interactive services.

See the Enhanced TV Video Vault Page for video of the actual application.

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This interactive voting application supports the ‘I’m a Celebrity - Get me out of Here!’ reality TV show that recently commenced its new series in May 2003.

Produced by Granada Interactive using Emuse’s ‘Modelstream’ tool, the application allows Sky Digital viewers to choose which celebrity takes the ‘Bush Tucker Trail’ challenge and participate in other votes related to the show.

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This enhanced TV game show, broadcast by "Challenge?" on the Sky Digital platform and developed by TwoWayTV presents a number of challenges...

How do you enhance a TV game show with interactivity without detracting from the programme? How do you replicate the gameplay of the board game "Scrabble" in the interactive TV world?

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Heavily promoted in the press and on-air, Discovery's Elvis provided background information for special documentary programming on the 20th anniversary of Elvis's death.

As with many Enhanced TV services on the Sky Platform - a 1/4 screen video window was chosen rather than overlays on the main video.

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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.

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China Set to be the Number One Broadband Market by 2007

September 4, 2006 - China's broadband market will reach 139 million subscribers by 2010 according to Ovum, the analyst and consulting company. China will overtake the US to become the world's biggest broadband market, in less than a year.

ITV Digital get a great deal of value out of their character "Monkey" - a stuffed puppet used across much of their advertising for the platform.

Here we have an example of the on air campaign for the interactive version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire featuring Al and Monkey.

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Driving Towards the Triple Play - Yankee Group whitepaper

Competition between telcos and cable providers is stronger than ever. As cable companies begin to deploy voice services, telecommunications companies are seeing their traditional voice business erode.

Mid April 2003 finally saw the launch of Sky's much talked about music channel offering, specifically designed to compete with the existing music channel offerings of EMAP (The Box, KISS etc.) and MTV’s MTV UK, MTV Dance, MTV Hits, M2 TMF etc. Borrowing heavily from the 'The Box' model, the three new channels ‘Scuzz’, ‘Flaunt’ and ‘The Amp’ have launched with their own individual lifestyle identities and demographic target

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This interactive version of the Saturday Show once again makes good use of the BBC's multistream capabilities. Pressing the red button during the regular broadcast takes viewers to the familiar choice of feeds that has been seen previously with Wimbledon, Winter Olympics and various other BBC applications.

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Sky News Active has recently been upgraded with a voting application and the whole application launches much more cleanly these days.

Viewers use their remote control to register their vote on a major news issue. Calls go to the backend via a Premium Rate Telephone number - costing the subscriber approx 30 pence and generating revenue for Sky.

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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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From October 1st - Sky ditched the Open.... brand and relaunched and reconfigured its interactive services as Sky Active.

The Open.... brand (four dots!) has always sat uneasily against Sky - and the new look is the final nail in the coffin for a brand which was all to often confused with Sky's middleware provider OpenTV.

The new service is now more effectively integrated with Sky's other interactive services, particularly enhancements to programming.

It remains to be seen whether this rebranding will encourage more UK homes to interact, shop and bank via their TV sets.

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Delivering Video and Advanced Services through IP Set-Top Boxes  - WHITEPAPER PHILIPS

This paper describes the evolution of Video-over-IP and related services, as part of a ‘multi-play’ service package offer. The effect on and uptake by telcos, other service operators and broadcasters are examined in relation to the availability and significance of increasing bandwidth.

The BBC's The Murder Game series commenced on Saturday 30th March on BBC One, with an associated and very comprehensive interactive service that is available to Sky Digital homes from 21.00 - 02.30 daily via the Red button.

The programme focusses on 10 real people try to solve a fictional murder. The ten chosen investigators, chosen out of 100,000 applicants, must find out who the murderer is under the close scrutiny of the cameras.

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The Enhanced TV gameshow Defectors launched on Flextech's "Challenge ?" channel on May 20th 2002 - After 3 weeks, 18% or around 1/5 of viewers who watch the show are opting to interact with it.

Whats more, the application is extremely simple in terms of the interface - just a score calculator and the question colour choices superimposed over the video.

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Similar in format to "Big Brother" Survivor was one of the key prime time programmes of ITV's Spring/Autumn schedule. Carlton Active, the creators of the service suceeded in pushing the terrible MHEG system used by the UK DTT platform to its very limits, particularly in the browsable profiles which seems to work rather effectively.

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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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Five to Launch Red Button on Cable With Two Way TV

August 17, 2006 - Five’s digital cable red button services will be provided by Two Way TV including enhanced TV, instant win betting, games, competitions and mobile content.

Already a number of competing email systems operate on the Sky plaform - however first to launch was Open.... with Open Mail. This short promo actually shows the primary reason why the TV isn't the best place to check your email!

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By pressing the red button when the 'Peep' call-to-action appears, viewers can explore 4 separate video feeds making use of a similar template to the original Sky News Active, Big Brother and Star Ticket applications.

The streams are 'News' providing 24/7 access to MTV News, 'Tunes' which offer MTV's exclusive, latest and most talked about videos. 'Prime' which includes out-takes and sneaky peeks at upcoming episodes of The Osbournes, Dirty Sanchez and Real World. According to MTV's website, at night 'Prime' clips will be uncensored and they advise that viewers 'be prepared for swearing galore and late-night festivities!' Finally the fourth stream is 'Rare' which will according to MTV broadcast content that is 'New, innovative, funny stupid and just plain weird'

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Following the Queen's Jubilee celebrations, this application, created in partnership with UK developer GOiNTERACTtv surveyed the BBC's Sky Digital audience over one week in early June. Viewers were able to access the interactive poll by pressing the ‘red button’ on the remote control during live BBC News broadcasts or through BBC News 24, and also via the BBCi-bar accessed by pressing the ‘text button’ on the handset. The survey asked just 6 questions, easily selectable via the left and right keys with the results being sent back via the STB modem at a drop charge of 25 pence.

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