Oceanic Time Warner Cable Deploys ActiveVideo Networks' Platform

Time Warner Cable's Hawaii system, Oceanic Time Warner Cable--which has a long history of pioneering innovative interactive TV technologies--has deployed an ITV offering based on technologies and services from ActiveVideo Networks (formerly ICTV).

The latter bills its platform as intelligently streaming both traditional and Web-based content to any digital set-top box and as combining the personalized, dynamic socially connected experience of the Web with the quality, immediacy and remote-control navigation that end-users expect from television. Components of the new Oceanic Time Warner Cable offering at launch include interactive TV games from TAG Networks; interactive home shopping from HSN; and news, sports and children's versions of ActiveVideo's personalizable video navigation system, P:Mosaic. ActiveVideo's platform is also enabling Oceanic Time Warner Cable to create Web-based channels that are specific to the Hawaii market. "With studies continuing to show that the television remains the device of choice for viewing video content, we're seeing dramatically increased interest in ActiveVideo solutions that bring the Web experience to television through existing set-top boxes and CE devices," Jeff Miller, president and CEO of ActiveVideo Networks, said in a prepared statement. "We're pleased to be working with Time Warner Cable to prove the ability of intelligent streaming to enhance the existing interactive options for the cable and broadcast industries."

The new deployment follows a system-wide trial of ActiveVideo during the recent Beijing Olympics: the trial presented Oceanic subscribers with a multiscreen mosaic containing multiple channels of broadcast and cable Olympics programming, as well as Olympics news, photo albums, schedules and other content acquired from RSS feeds.

According to ActiveVideo, the new deployment means that Oceanic Time Warner Cable subscribers can, among other things, play Tetris, Sudoku and other games from TAG Networks, as well as specially created children's games featuring Barney and Thomas & Friends; use Web-based search and navigation to locate merchandise from HSN's online inventory, and the

n make purchases using their remotes; and simultaneously monitor and choose between multiple news, sports or children's channels.

ActiveVideo Networks bills channels powered by its platform (note: it claims that its platform is now powering interactivity for over a million cable and IPTV customers) as seamlessly combining broadband video, graphics, viewer interaction and targeted interactive advertising: broadband-driven channels are personalized in the network and delivered to the TV set using intelligent MPEG streaming via the ActiveVideo Distribution Network, reducing the cost of program production and keeping the features of high video quality, immediacy and remote control navigation that viewers expect from television, the company says. It claims that its technologies allow TV viewing to be shaped by a wide range of entities, including traditional and Web-based programmers, local cable affiliates, consumer electronics companies, advertisers, social networks and viewers themselves. (Note: for an in-depth overview of ActiveVideo's deployment with Time Warner Cable, see [itvt]'s interview with Jeff Miller in Issue 8.08.)

In other ActiveVideo Networks news: The company has selected RevX Systems' Data Mediation and Reporting System to enable near-real time audience measurement and business metrics (including such metrics as total viewership, advertising exposure, click-through, service usage and event processing) for its Web-enhanced interactive TV services. According to the companies, RevX's system will enable ActiveVideo to provide operators, broadcasters and advertisers with real-time insight into audience behavior and network activities. "RevX will enable us to provide the near-real time audience measurement and network reporting that the media community demands today," Ted Ludvig, ActiveVideo's director of systems engineering, said in a prepared statement. "Our deployment of RevX is accelerating our creation of new advertising models and strategies that are designed to help programmers, operators and CE manufacturers to fully monetize the personal television capabilities of ActiveVideo." RevX bills its system as a scalable platform that can harvest any event or correlated transaction from geographically diverse network elements, and as correlating, classifying and managing massive volumes of granular data in real time. The resulting data is stored and available to the RevX Reporting module, which provides conditional access to data elements based on rights and privileges.