iTV Doctor Is In!: EBIF on a One-Way DTA

Dear Readers:

I used to say that my 90-year-old mother would stop the expansion of digital cable television cold. She's a die-hard analog subscriber without premium services in Wilmington, DE. And she would never EVER upgrade to a more expensive digital service just so Comcast could save some bandwidth.
 
Until the Digital Terminal Adapter came along this past year. All of a sudden, she has digital service for the same price, and doesn't even know it. Problem solved.
 
But she'd never EVER upgrade a set-top box in order to get interactive services, even with a prescription from her son, The iTV Doctor. So she can read about interactive television, but not experience it.
 
We're moving towards TV Everywhere quickly, but "iTV Everywhere" is elusive. We can interact on the living room set, on the phone, pad and PC. But not on the DTA in the bedroom, or in DTA-only homes.
 
And Brent Smith thinks that is a significant missed opportunity. Brent is president of Evolution Digital, and he's just announced that he's putting an EBIF agent into his one-way Universal DTA's (which can operate in both Motorola and Cisco/SA systems in both SD and HD).
 
And it turns out the Evolution DTA is a powerful little sucker. Brent sent along the following comparison of his DTA to the venerable DCT-2000:

Brent points out that the 1MB available for Flash is more than sufficient for his needs.
 
But one-way EBIF? What can you do with that?
 
It turns out you can do quite a bit. For example, the first EBIF deployment in the country was on Verizon FiOS TV, for the 2008 Summer Olympics. And that was an entirely one-way application--everything was pushed to the box, and there was no need for a return path for the viewer experience (although Verizon did use the return path for metrics).
 
Then you can look at casual games, as delivered by satellite. The game application is downloaded on command from the bird, and the subscriber plays the game from the set-top box. The entire experience is right there--the game, the points, even the advertising. The consumer is interacting with the box. No return path needed (although with their new broadband-enabled "hybrid" boxes, we should expect to see both DISH Network and DirecTV get more aggressive with two-way interactivity).
 
What about advertising, you say? Well, as we speak, I'm looking at "The Barbie Channel" on DISH Network, and I don't have my phone line hooked up. I can play the "Barbie Fashion Fairytale Dress-Up Game" right from the box, and it's a terrific long-form advertisement. But if I want to get updates for "Barbie Channel Parents," I need to key in my email address and send it back. Which means I have to connect the phone line.
 
But typing an email address with a soft-keyboard is a pain in the thumb, as our friends at Verizon FiOS TV discovered. It was the only complaint about their very popular Twitter widget. So they found a way to loop in companion devices (e.g. smart phones) with their whole-house WiFi strategy (The iTV Doctor, 8/26/10) to allow FiOS TV subscribers to re-tweet the way they normally do--on their phone.
 
So even a one-way EBIF-enabled DTA can take advantage of a smart phone for the return path, but how do you sync it up? Brent Smith says he's developing the protocol for linking the phone to the DTA's MAC address. Easy-peasy, as they say. But what if I actually want to sync-up with a specific program? Interact with a program in real time? Since I'm a DTA subscriber, I don't have to worry about delayed viewing on demand, or from my DVR. Everything I watch is live (at least on this TV).
 
There seem to be at least two developing methods, and both are on the way to a TV near you. The Microsoft Tag, seen on pedestrian billboards, bus signs and recent issues of "Entertainment Weekly," can fire up your smart phone's browser and take you to a specific Web page. So if you're watching "Fringe" on Fox, and Fox sends down a simple one-way EBIF image of the appropriate Microsoft Tag, you're in business. Of course, today you'd need to get up from the couch and fill your phone's screen with the tag image, but that's a solvable problem.
 
Similarly, the folks at Mobio Identity Systems are using barcodes as a way to sync iPhones with just about everything. Earlier this year, a telethon for the University of Ottawa Heart Institute encouraged iPhone users to scan an on-screen QR (Quick Response) barcode to make a donation. And the QR barcode is a much cleaner graphic, and can be captured by your smart phone from the couch. Here's a link to the QR barcode in action: 
 
http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=512973765595
 
So, while readers may get tired of hearing me say it, "You don't need to interact ON television to interact WITH television." And thanks to the folks at Evolution Digital, we just might have completed the interactive digital footprint.

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The iTV Doctor is *Rick Howe*, who provides interactive television consulting services to programmers and advertisers. He is the recipient of a CTAM Tami Award for retention marketing and this year was nominated to Cable Pioneers. He is also the co-author of a patent for the use of multiscreen mosaics in EPG's. Endorsed by top cable and satellite distributors, "Dr" Howe still makes house calls, and the first visit is always free. His services include product development, distribution strategy and the development of low-cost interactive applications for rapid deployment across all platforms. Have a question for the iTV Doctor? Email him at itvdoctor@itvt.com