Music Choice Taps Norway's never.no to Power its New Interactive TV Network, SWRV

Norwegian interactive TV software company, never.no, announced Monday that its flagship Interactivity Suite is a key technology component of SWRV, the new 24/7 interactive music video network that was launched earlier this year by multiplatform programmer, Music Choice. The network--which is currently available to Cox digital cable subscribers in New England and Virginia on Channel 900 and to Cox broadband subscribers nationwide (note: Music Choice says that the network will be rolled out by multiple operators to millions of homes across the US in the coming months)--offers a line-up of interactive TV shows that, among other things, allow viewers to submit content, vote for and rate videos, and take over entire programming blocks. Viewers participate in the network's programming by sending in texts, photos and video, either by using their mobiles or by going to swrv.tv. "With SWRV, Music Choice has taken dynamic scheduling and playout based on user interaction to a level never before seen in broadcasting," Stu Farber, Music Choice's VP of engineering, operations, and information technology, said in a prepared statement. "The technical considerations were extremely complex and ambitious, and we took very seriously the task of finding the right partner to help us. In the end, we determined that never.no's Interactivity Suite was the best selection, based on its ability to combine the power, flexibility, and reliability we needed to make SWRV a reality."

According to never.no, key to Music Choice's selection of its Interactivity Suite for SWRV was the solution's Dynamic Scheduler, a tool for configuring, deploying and scheduling interactive, automated TV graphics. Within the context of SWRV's floating dynamic schedule, never.no says, the Interactivity Suite performs a complex array of tasks, including scheduling content based on voting results and handling user-submitted text, images and various types of metadata-to-screen by effecting control of broadcast equipment such as video servers and graphics systems. In addition, the company says, Interactivity Suite manages dynamic video squeeze-back and automatically controls audio volume for parallel video signals. never.no claims that many of these features are industry firsts.

A demo video showcasing SWRV's use of never.no's Interactivity Suite is embedded above.