CRUNCH Flexes Interactive Television Muscle; Retains iTV Experts Filter Media for Video-On-Demand Strategy

Stop buying exercise videos. Filter Media is helping CRUNCH develop a strategy for going digital. Doug Levine, CRUNCH Chairman and CEO, says that developing an iTV strategy will allow them "to provide exercise enthusiasts with the ultimate in personalized fitness."

Digital Conversion Taking Root

Despite my interest in interactive television, I do not have a set-top box. I subscribe only to basic cable. I've been wary to upgrade because of the expense. When I was a kid, you didn't have to pay for television, and I don't see why I should pay for it now. Cable companies are making the upgrade to digital, but will consumers?

iTV Revenues: Positioning for Incremental and Diversified Revenue Streams

Summary of a Jupiter report. There's an obvious contradiction here. On the one hand, Jupiter predicts that buying habits will shift from phone to TV, particularly for infomercials. On the other hand, they find:

ITV shopping faces the same barriers as Internet shopping, such as the ability to touch a product, lack of instant gratification and additional shipping costs.

Yet people buy things via phone from infomercials...

InformationWeek > Interactive TV > TV Goes Interactive > August 13, 2001

InformationWeek provides an overview of how major players like Yahoo!, Sony, Cablevision, and others are getting into the iTV business... Off-topic but perhaps most interesting is the cozy place Vivendi finds itself nestled between Microsoft and AOL Time Warner.

The article concludes with a positive, if not skeptical outlook on television-based commerce:

Retail-based interactive TV may be a few years away, but some analysts predict U.S. sales through that medium will eclipse those via the Internet by 2004.

Tennis anyone?

The BBC's interactive Wimbledon and British Open coverage offered viewers the ability to choose what they wanted to watch from a selection of five video streams. Both services also offered some statistics and player information.

Play with Me TV

eMarketer's take on iTV. Chock full o' numbers. The author concludes that the industry should proceed with caution, lest it disrupt the already positive customer experience of television by itself:

Interactive services on the TV should enhance the already good service one receives rather than complicating it to the extent that it becomes something other than what people are used to. For complicated tasks, we already have the personal computer (PC).

I wonder what he counts as a "complicated task."

CABLE CONTINUES RAPID DEPLOYMENT OF BROADBAND SERVICES

Digital video and cable modem service are now available to more than 65 million U.S. homes, and tens of thousands are signing up every week.

Robert Sachs, NCTA President and CEO

Liberate Technologies -- Showcase, Mixed Signals

Very cool case study detailing the interactive programming developed for Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune.

In effect, the home viewing experience is like being a "fourth" contestant on the show.

Interactive TV Puts New Face On Television

Summary of an event hosted by Digital Media Wire. Speakers covered a range of topics, though this summary only scratches the surface of the issues.

The Webification of TV is happening - Tech News - CNET.com

Werbach's piece, despite the weak conclusions, points to some interesting transpositions of TV and Web. The best thing in the article is:

Kathy Haesele of Advanswers Media, a St. Louis media-buying firm, took issue with "ESPNews'" decision to continue running news headlines at the bottom of the screen even during commercials.

"Advertisers pay a lot of money for those commercials," she said. "I don't know why news should be distracting the viewer."

News: Is interactive TV watching you?

Run-of-the-mill coverage of the privacy debate. This line, however, caught my attention:

While the debate over privacy rages on, financial analysts have been quietly picking up coverage of the sector, and they're betting that wherever the line is drawn, companies in the interactive TV field are bound to succeed.

Princeton Video Image, RespondTV and Tribune Expand the Capabilities Of ITV With Interactive Baseball Broadcast

Alas, the interactivity added to this particular baseball broadcast was advertising... Still, a step in the right direction...