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Monday, November 27 FEATURE-Interactive TV Puts Couch Potatoes To Work By Merissa Marr, European media correspondent LONDON, Nov 27 (Reuters) - Not too long ago, interactive television was being written off as a geeky experiment that wouldn`t catch on as U.S. entertainment giants lost hundreds of millions of dollars on ambitious trials that flopped. But the techies refused to give up and interactive TV is back in town, this time with Europe leading the way. Money is pouring into transforming the humble television set - which has spent the past 50 years as a passive medium - into a gateway of personalised services from e-mail and home shopping to video-on-demand and gambling. But why should it be any more viable this time around?For a start, the rise of an Internet culture has given people a taste for e-commerce, e-mail and Web browsing, while Pay TV has got viewers used to paying for what they watch. Technology has also become sleeker and more powerful since the U.S. experiments in the early 1990s when cumbersome, costly systems failed to woo viewers. "No one dictates when I read the newspaper or go to the bathroom, but TV does. It`s too inconvenient for this age and that`s why the chances for interactive television are so good now," Werner Lauff, president of the broadband group at German media group Bertelsmann [BTGGga.F], said at a recent conference. While Europe is showing signs of success with some four million viewers tapping into on-screen features such as shopping and e-mail, analysts say interactivity still has some way to go before appealing to the global masses. THE BRITISH LABORATORY Europe is seen as the ideal testing ground. PC penetration is lower in Europe than the United States but the population is just as content hungry - a void developers hope will be filled by interactive TV (iTV). Many viewers in Europe are already used to interacting with their televisions through teletext - a 25-year-old service which offers pages of information on the TV screen - while satellite operators have been aggressively rolling out digital television, forcing cable and terrestrial rivals to follow suit. "Europe has led the way in interactive television through the leadership of (satellite operators) British Sky Broadcasting [BSY.L], Canal Plus [CNLP.PA] and TPS. The U.S. market is really just beginning to launch services, and is at least 12-18 months behind the European market," Merrill Lynch said in a report. Britain in particular is seen as the ultimate interactive TV laboratory with Open - controlled by Britain`s largest satellite operator BSkyB - taking the lead as the most successful platform in the world, one year after launch. Offering home shopping, games and e-mail, Open spreads its net across 4.2 million UK homes with half of those using the service every month and 13 percent making at least one purchase. BSkyB`s relentless digital push has not been without reason. BSkyB Chairman Rupert Murdoch plans to use BSkyB and Open as a template for Sky Global Networks, his global satellite business which is set to be floated in the first part of next year. Chase Manhattan`s Chase H&Q estimates there are now more than three million interactive TV users in Britain and this is expected to surpass four million by the end of 2000, rising to above 20 million across Europe by the end of 2001. While interactive TV of any real scale does not exist in the United States yet, executives across the Atlantic are anxiously watching Europe as they prepare to roll out their own products, mindful of the failure of previous U.S. trials by heavy hitter Time Warner [TWX.N] and others. "The United States is such a huge market with a love of technology and a faddish nature that if Americans get the idea that digital television is it, they will pile in," said Patrick Barwise, a professor at London Business School who is chairman of the Future Media research programme. U.S. technology research company Forrester is optimistic, predicting that "smarter television" will create $25 billion of extra revenue in the United States by 2005. But the real challenge will be Asia. While the United States accounts for less than 10 percent of the world`s 1.1 billion TV households, China boasts over 30 percent. DO VIEWERS REALLY WANT iTV? Docu-soap Big Brother, a "fly-on-the-wall" reality show which stormed the TV ratings in Europe, has had viewers flocking to its website - evidence that couch potatoes are willing to emerge from the comfort of their sofas to interact with the TV. A Mercer Management Consulting survey of Germany -Europe`s biggest TV market where four-fifths of TV households are linked to cable or satellite - showed that 70 percent of households were interested in using interactive TV for shopping and banking while half those without the Internet would go straight to iTV. In fact, Forrester predicts that the volume of commerce over the TV - known as t-commerce - could exceed e-commerce over PCs within five years - a trend that would be accelerated by the roll-out of high-speed broadband connections. The Mercer survey also showed that 82 percent of German viewers interviewed wanted to control when they watch programmes while many others wanted to avoid advertising -- the perfect backdrop for the personal video recorder. Among killer applications, the personal recorder (PVR) is expected to be one of the most revolutionary. PVRs, currently made by U.S. companies TiVo [TIVO.O] and ReplayTV, allow users to record programming, letting them "pause" a show, go and walk the dog, and return to where they left off. As Replay TV`s slogan "power to the potato" suggests, viewers will no longer be bound by schedules and will have the power to gleefully skip through advertisements. Electronic programme guides (EPG) are also a good bet -giving viewers a vital tool to navigate a confusing array of digital channels. But the future of applications such as video-on-demand and pay-per-view is less clear. "Almost everyone in the industry is travelling blind and if they tell you otherwise, they`re lying. It will be a highly fractualised and confusing market for many years," an executive from U.S. player Respond TV said at a recent conference. BABY STEPS TO iTV Enhanced TV - which gives viewers more subtle interactivity such as a choice of camera angle for a football match - has helped pave the way for full-on interactive television. "Electronic programme guides and enhanced TV have been baby steps to interactivity. We`re ultimately asking people to make a huge jump with interactive TV, after 50 years of slumping back in their sofas," said Ricardo Tejada, spokesman for Open. But the degree of interaction that viewers are willing to accept has sparked a fierce debate among developers. Some argue that consumers still have certain expectations to relax and be entertained when they watch TV and only want to interact with a select range of services like Open. But others say the future lies in adapting a more open system that provides direct Internet access on the television screen. In any event, most people in the industry accept that the TV and PC will remain very different animals. "Interaction will not affect when, how and why we watch television and much of the viewing behaviour will remain pretty similar. The psychology of watching TV lies in the need to relax at the end of the day, usually in company and that need will still be there," said LBS`s Barwise. © 2000 Reuters Ltd. |
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| aus der Diskussion: | Interactive TV - Markt und Wettbewerb |
| Autor (Datum des Eintrages): | Janphil (28.11.00 02:09:07) |
| Beitrag: | 111 von 232 (ID:2429370) |
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