IPTV Programming Featured Article

Digital TV solutions provider OpenTV Corp announced Tuesday the selection of its Participate solution by NBC Universal (News - Alert). That company will be using OpenTV Participate to manage cross-platform, interactive TV applications on the Web, on mobile devices, and delivered via set-top boxes.

 

Established in 2004, NBC Universal is a media and entertainment company, formed when General Electric's NBC merged with Vivendi (News - Alert) Universal Entertainment. The company creates and markets entertainment, news, and information programming globally. It owns and operates a  portfolio of news and entertainment networks, a premier motion picture company, significant television production operations, a television stations group, and theme parks.

 

OpenTV (News - Alert) was founded in 1994. Its main business involves the sale of set-top-box operating systems and software. The company's software has been integrated in more than 106 million digital set-top boxes and digital televisions around the world, and enables enhanced program guides, video-on-demand, personal video recording, enhanced television, interactive shopping, interactive and addressable advertising, and a variety of consumer care and communication applications.

 

"We are very pleased to have been chosen by one of the biggest media and entertainment companies in the world to be the central component of its multi-platform interactivity," said Ben Bennett (News - Alert), OpenTV's Chief Executive Officer. "We look forward to a long term relationship with NBC Universal, a company that we consider to be at the forefront of innovation in viewer participation television."

 

OpenTV Participate is a server-based system that delivers a personalized interactive experience to viewers on any platform, whether cable, satellite, terrestrial, mobile or Web. It does so by processing several thousand transactions per second in real time. Apart from the synchronized interactive services, OpenTV Participate also allows for virtually unlimited value-added content, such as trivia, fun facts, sponsor messages and interactive advertising. 

 

This deal is the outcome of a successful one-year collaboration between NBC.com and OpenTV during which NBC.com used the OpenTV Participate to successfully power live, Web (PC) based interactive services for the hit primetime series "Heroes."

 

During this period, 'two-screen' interactive services were created, scheduled, managed and analyzed using OpenTV Participate's production tools, and then synchronized with the "Heroes" broadcast each Monday night across all continental US time zones. Audiences were invited to interact with the broadcasts by entering live polls and offering their own predictions on the outcome of the storylines, all in real time.

In the words of Jon Dakss, NBC Universal's Vice President of Interactive Media Product Development, "OpenTV Participate allows us to differentiate our programming and make it more engaging and fun for our viewers across all devices. It's an intuitive, easy-to-deploy solution that offers our viewers unique ways of getting more involved with their favorite shows and enables new interactive marketing opportunities for advertisers as well."