TECHNOLOGY AND MARKET QUESTIONS DOMINATE AT ITV CONFERENCE
LOS ANGELES -- Good news and bad news predictions for future of interactive TV (iTV) dominated Myers Forum on iTV here (CD March 1 p8). Industry executives debated how quickly installed base for digital set-top boxes would grow and whether or not technology was robust enough to support all that iTV content creators want to offer to consumers.
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WorldGate Chmn. Hal Krisbergh said positive news was that cable operators finally were beginning to grasp iTV’s potential. “The MSO’s are now finally beginning to focus their resources on the iTV space,” he said, “and finally the industry is beginning to converge around several open standards.” He said certain technology favors set-top boxes and content can be delivered 4 times faster than high-speed cable modems. “The only limitations are that consumers won’t get the same resolution,” he said. Krisbergh also said that TV, primarily URLs tagged to programming and advertising, were 2nd only to search engines in driving traffic to Web sites, proving that consumers did look to TV for guidance to Internet. He said many of early iTV successes, such as electronic program guides, were unlikely to be huge revenue generators, and such services may end up serving as “churn minimizers.” Instead, Krisbergh said, major iTV revenue streams are likely to be video-on-demand and Internet TV.
Krisbergh did voice support for Motorola’s 2000 series of set-top boxes as being sufficient for most iTV functions. But he was disputed on later panels as ACTV COO David Reese and others suggested that more advanced boxes ultimately could be needed to offer consumers truly wide gamut of compelling iTV content.
Lingering over conference was sense of dej? vu. Indeed, while iTV certainly shows as much commercial promise now as Internet did in mid-1990s, there’s question whether it will follow same path. Justin McCarthy of interactive ad agency Double Click said major advertisers still looked at iTV as experimental ad platform and delicately raised question whether there was overemphasis on future iTV revenue streams from brand-building ads and e-commerce. McCarthy said: “Because e-commerce is the sexy part, we tend to focus way too much on it and leave behind the attributes of direct marketing and interactive programming and community building that I think are the things are really going to drive interactive television.”