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Event: Review

Deutsche Banc Alex. Brown Enhanced TV & Broadband
February 10 & 11, 2000 ITVT Issue 2.67 2/16/00, San Francisco, CA

(Article best viewed with Microsoft Internet Explorer for accurate formatting.)

By Tracy Swedlow, ITVT

Last Thursday and Friday, Larry Marcus of DB Alex. Brown staged an event which encouraged about 200-300 institutional, corporate and private investors, as well as a variety of other participants in the interactive TV space to attend what became a solid overview of major industry players, technologies, trends, and remaining challenges facing the ITV/broadband industry. Several high-level, notable speakers presented their views and overviews in a concentrated way and much networking ensued. Unfortunately, panels were not as informative as later breakout sessions; though, on the upside, attendees enjoyed the presence of real decision-makers and the founders of a few unusual companies giving the event a fresh dynamic. Mr. Marcus' leadership of the event was evident as he often asked probing questions during sessions to retrieve deeper responses from speakers. More critically, Marcus drew attention to important subjects readily ignored by most of the ITV industry such as the importance of communications technologies and community development. One need not look far to see that the AOL TV platform may alert everybody to that when their box comes out this summer with integrated Internet Messaging technology and services.

In general, Marcus' address on Thursday morning contained slides that predicted, amongst other things, A) there will be over 150 million advanced analog interactive TV boxes deployed over the next 4 years whereas there will be only 9.5 million WebTV/AOLTV units deployed by then; B) T-commerce will surpass e-commerce by 2004; and C) by 2004 36 million will have broadband access. Marcus also emphasized his 5 Golden Rules of Enhanced TV: "1) the service provider is the gatekeeper, 2) TV-centric implementation wins; 3) The power of the network is as important as the set-top; 4) Don't underestimate one-way data; 5) The devil in the details-implementation and integration issues are real."

After a full morning of panel and presentations, lunch was a welcome respite. Speaking of which, there was so much meat (roast beef, chicken breast, shrimp) it was clear this was an investment banker event. The rest of the afternoon contained further presentations, and later, an active networking session offered abundant sushi and shrimp cocktail demo hour with open bar. Friday's sessions were mostly devoted to IP Broadband companies, rather than cable-centric.

Other highlights included hearing Mitch Kertzman speak (Liberate). Jan Steenkamp (OpenTV) reviewed his new strategy which includes the Internet and successes with the Open.... project in the UK. For example, there are on average 400 transactions a day after 3 months in operation. The Trivial Pursuit game generates millions of emails a day, and so on. Two companies caught some attention: FireTalk (IP communications) and MetaTV (tools for cable portal development). Additionally, It was interesting to observe Friday the moment when Bill Sheppard, business development manager digital television at Sun, directly asked CEO of WebTV, Bruce Leak, during his session, why were they so opposed to integrating Java on the platform. Leak was unwilling to avail an answer for obvious reasons, but it was an entertaining stonewall. Other highlights included Henry Yuen's (CEO of Gemstar) keynote Thursday morning. Other than general info, he talked about another seemingly unrelated technology: the eBook. Though most were surprised as eBook technology seemed out of context at this early stage, clearly it is not. ITVT privately addressed Yuen about interactive video on this platform which he favors.

Overall, the best part of any event is meeting people, getting their views, coming into contact with new developers, and leaving informed. Accomplished.