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uk bbci sky - Diners on BBC Choice |
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 Some people are actively criticising the BBC's interactive TV teams for not having actually developed any interactive services. Why? Well its not entirely true, but many of BBCi's services are not based on pages and pages of text and still images or clever return path usage, but on the delivery of multiple streams of video. These streams are simply cross-linked and offer small amounts of text and interactivity. After all, interactive TV is all about television!
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Now I hadn't heard about the "Diners" programme being interactive until it was demonstrated at a conference but I did make the effort to check out the service recently only to find that there was no indication either from the continuity announcer or on screen that the programme was interactive. Pressing the red button did launch the interactive service and I did however manage to find a link also in the BBC's i-Bar - but neither were obvious.
Launching the interactive service allows the viewer to surf between the four tables of diners in a restaurant using the colour keys. (Four seperate video streams) You can follow their conversations and move onto another table if they become boring. Because the linear nature of those 4 streams - it can be hit and miss finding an interesting bit - but maybe one day with PVR's you will be able to jump to it using in-built meta-data.
The "OpenTV" interactivity appears when you press the "i" button on the Sky Remote which pulls up a special profile screen giving you background information on the each of the participants.
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Enhanced TV Part 2 
