Cable Show ’08: ICTV Changes Name

Web-to-TV Firm Now Called ActiveVideo Networks, Shows Enhanced-TV Applications

By Glen Dickson -- Broadcasting & Cable, 5/18/2008 12:23:00 PM

New Orleans -- ICTV, a Los Gatos, Calif.-based firm that has been promoting the idea of bringing Web content to the living-room TV since the late 1990s, changed its name to ActiveVideo Networks and said it will focus on providing software and services instead of trying to sell headend hardware that reformats Web content for delivery over digital-cable networks.

“We’re no longer in the business of selling boxes to go into networks,” said Ed Forman, executive vice president and chief strategy officer.

ICTV’s technology can create virtual channels that incorporate live video with Web content, and it has developed such applications for programmers such as AccuWeather, CNN, HSN and Fox Reality Channel. But it has had a hard time gaining traction among major cable operators for the necessary headend equipment, which changes Web content to MPEG-2 video that can be viewed on a digital-cable box. Forman said the company has deployed fewer than 1,000 of its hardware units nationwide.

“I would characterize it as a solution that never quite gelled with the network operators,” he added.

In its new incarnation of ActiveVideo, the company is seeking to provide the same type of functionality by combining its server-side processing technology with the enhanced-TV and tru2way standardized software platforms cable operators want to use to enable interactivity going forward,

At The Cable Show ’08 here, ActiveVideo is demonstrating how Web content can be delivered to an ETV software client that can run on a standard digital set-top. Applications include advertising showcases, which consumers can trigger by clicking for more information during a linear advertisement; polling; engaging in interactive content while continuing to watch the linear program in a mosaic-type window; and pausing video-on-demand programming to view an interactive feature or advertisement.

Forman said the ability to wrap interactive content around a video window that maintains the linear programming on-screen is a key requirement. “Neither the advertiser nor the viewer wants to be taken away [from the main program],” he added.

For more on The Cable Show ’08, click here.