What is the future of television in the interactive era? Is the Internet a tool that will help the traditional broadcaster drive viewership and add value to its audience experience, or does it threaten to take over the market from them? These are some of the questions on the table at Convergencetv.com, a Playback-produced conference scheduled for Aug. 9-10 at Toronto’s Hilton Hotel.

Convergencetv.com will assemble some of today’s key players in new media for nine sessions that will try to define the present and future roles of the tv set and the home computer.

Some argue that with ever-improving streaming video technology and the forthcoming arrival of digital tv and its interactive potential the functions of these two appliances are becoming indistinguishable. Others believe that after a hard day at the office, you just want to crash on the couch and be entertained – you don’t want to interact with your remote control beyond selecting a channel and turning off your brain.

To turn on our brains before the conference, Playback presents the Convergencetv.com Report, which looks at these very issues. The Internet is a new delivery tool many of us have in our homes, and it provides a fresh medium for people to get their messages out there, no broadcast licence required. What will drive traffic to your site is the quality and nature of your content, which provides a challenge to the traditional broadcaster and Internet startup alike.

There are no absolutes in these nascent days of convergence tv. ‘It’s an ongoing story,’ one Internet company executive told us, ‘but it’s a fun place to be.’

www.convergence-tv.com

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Ottawa software and service provider softv.net is helping traditional tv broadcasters and Internet startups provide their viewerships with an online experience that puts the ‘multi’ in multimedia.

In business for over a year, softv is a spin-off of Ingenious Engineering, a consulting and contract engineering company that became involved in broadcast projects and subsequently developed related software. This software, which integrates video and text, was used by Toronto all-news tv specialty service CablePulse24 in the creation of its screen layout.

Then, according to Jeff McNamee, softv.net’s vp strategic accounts, ‘[The company] migrated the same software, the look and feel and automation, into the Internet world. [It’s] the convergence of traditional tv broadcast to Internet video.’

The streaming media website development software is called sofTV.MediaSuite, which, McNamee explains, does more than just slap together words and images.

‘We’ve taken the true power of the Internet, which is a multimedia environment – text, graphics, and video – and it all works together on the same page,’ he says. ‘[It’s] as opposed to the more ‘traditional’ approach of having video pop up on top of your window and you’re just looking at a video playback region not related in any way to the rest of the page.’

Minnesota-based ibs (Internet Broadcasting Systems), a network of local Web channels, is one company that licenses sofTV.MediaSuite on behalf of broadcasters such as the Global Television Network to help them develop value-added online packages. ibs repurposes broadcasters’ content – news, sports and local programming – and puts it up on the Internet, thereby generating additional revenue through more advertising, and, as McNamee says, ‘more eyeballs.’

Another major partnership for SofTV.net is with Toronto’s Sympatico-Lycos, Canada’s number one Internet portal. The two are working together in the area of broadband – telecommunication providing multiple channels of data over a single communication medium. s-l, an ongoing project between Bell ActiMedia and Lycos that focuses on e-commerce, ads and sponsorships, is using the Ottawa company’s technology as well as some of its technical expertise.

Softv.net’s philosophy is to keep the site visitor on one page as long as possible for maximum ad exposure. Maintaining this kind of ‘stickiness’ means giving visitors a reason to stay, which is where sofTV.MediaSuite is particularly beneficial. Rotating banner ads and graphic information such as trivia and specifics can help maintain attention.

‘The one thing about putting video on the Internet is that all of a sudden people are staying longer than they might normally,’ McNamee points out. ‘You have to make sure the rest of your page both stays relevant and is dynamic enough to capture interest. If it’s video sitting on a static page, people quickly can lose interest in the rest of the page and there’s no rich experience.’

This approach opens up all kinds of new possibilities in e-commerce integrated with content.

‘If you’re watching a video of one of the James Bond films [on your computer] and his bmw drives by, we can put triggers right into the video that at that point open up an ad about bmws and keep it open for 30 seconds in another part of the page,’ McNamee illustrates. ‘At least there’s a relevance that way, as opposed to just a random cycling ad. It’s tying together emotion with e-commerce.’

McNamee sees rich media sites using sofTV.MediaSuite as offering a hassle-free visitor experience since there are no plug-ins to download.

In terms of streaming video technology, softtv.net incorporates others’ systems in its Web page synchronization.

‘We take advantage of the players who are already in there,’ McNamee says. ‘We’re fairly agnostic as far as the video streaming environment itself. We’re using and work completely compatibly with both the RealNetworks players and Microsoft Media Player. The video stream is using those playbacks and encodings.’

Although the quality of streaming video might still be unsatisfactory for many, McNamee sees great strides being made, with the availability of cable modems and adsl. The evolving compression technologies of RealNetworks and Windows are also improving the situation.

Developing sites themselves

ibs is in a sense a competitor of softv.net’s. The Ottawa company, with a total of 25 staff members, has its own Web designers, graphic artists and network people who allow it to go beyond just contributing software technology and help companies develop their sites.

Nonetheless, McNamee sees the relationship with ibs as advantageous, noting, ‘[They’re] a strong partner. They’re in the same business, and ultimately our goal is to leverage our technology, and they do that for us and augment what we can do ourselves.’ He states that ibs is currently involved with 40 tv stations’ online ventures, adding that softv.net has a new, even bigger partnership it will soon announce.

One client whose website softv.net constructed is Internet-based entertainment company PayForView.com, whose debut webcast on April 26 featured an all-female boxing card from Louisiana. According to McNamee, the free trial was well-received.

‘Technically it went very well,’ he says. ‘It wasn’t overly publicized, because it was more of a tech trial than a marketing trial, but it was a pleasant experience for the people involved because they were getting more than just video – they were getting statistics and all kinds of things tied to the video.’

PayForView.com has subsequently delivered a webcast for Ultimate Fighting Championship using the revenue model of its namesake, and McNamee reports it was an even greater success. He admits, however, that broadcasters already established in traditional arenas have the advantage over Internet startups

‘Broadcasters or other people who have intellectual property rights to content are going to do a lot of cross-promotion,’ he says. ‘They will promote their website on their traditional broadcast [and vice versa]. They are going to try to increase the leverage on their content and repurpose it. If it’s nbc, they’re going to do all kinds of promotion in a variety of media.’

But does the arrival of digital tv and video-on-demand threaten to steal away a benefit presently boasted by webcasts – mainly, the ability to watch specific content whenever the viewer chooses?

And then there is digital cinema. Toronto’s Paramount (Famous Players) theatre is already getting near-capacity crowds for its digital satellite projections of wwf wrestling, and a major rollout of digital projectors is expected in the next two to three years. Wouldn’t viewers rather watch live events on a movie or tv screen than on a little box on their computer monitor?

‘I think as a viewing appliance, an hdtv or even a traditional tv are going to certainly be strong and continue to be the dominant area for many cases, like entertainment television,’ McNamee says.

The future of webcasting must then lie in the type and quality of e-content websites provide. McNamee remains optimistic both traditional and new media can thrive concurrently.

‘They each have their application, and I think during this transition period there are perceived threats between the two media, but in the long run, I don’t think those are real.’

Nonetheless, broadcasters and communications companies want to stay on top in both areas, exemplified by the bce takeover of ctv, whereby some current and future ctv programming will be made available online exclusively through bce-operated portal sites.

‘The majority of people think it will be a marriage and that you’re going to have to have feet in both ponds,’ McNamee says. *

-www.softv.net

-www.ibsys.com

-pre.sympatico.ca

-www.payforview.com