Building Dynamic Content for Set-Top Boxes

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Introduction

Along with these services will come opportunities. Opportunities for content developers to create compelling interactive content designed especially with the needs of television viewers in mind. Opportunities for advertisers to take advantage of a direct connection to their customers. Opportunities for engineers to solve the myriad of technical problems associated with making interactive television services better in the digital era. And, most of all, opportunities for viewers to take advantage of and enjoy these new services.

Creating Dynamic Content to Appeal to Television Viewers

With the advent of these new services, content providers will have the difficult challenge to create and deliver compelling, dynamic interactive services to viewers. What is even more challenging, is that they must do so within the constraints of a typical television viewer's low attention span. In addition, this same television viewer is not used to interacting with their TV set - other than to change the channel or adjust the volume level.

In order to be appealing to television viewers, these interactive services must add more information, more control, more convenience, & more fun to the television viewing experience. Typical interactive applications which fall under these categories include:

• More Information: Electronic Programming Guides (EPGs), Enhanced Broadcasting
• More Control: Video-On-Demand (VOD), Multi-camera-angle sporting events
• More Convenience: Banking, Bill-paying, Shopping
• More Fun: Play along with the game show, TV Chat

These applications must be tailored to meet the specific needs and desires of their viewing/interacting audience. In order to do so, content developers must understand who their audience is. This means they must understand the underlying demographic, psychographic and geographic characteristics of their audience and, more importantly, they must also understand the benefits which their audience desires from interactivity.

In addition to viewer requirements, interactive television content will also have to meet stringent acceptance criteria set by television broadcasters. Broadcasters are looking to differentiate their current television programming offerings with minimalist, interactive content that presents value-added, show-specific, graphically-rich information to their audience. This interactive content must complement the underlying video and background audio, reinforce the broadcaster's unique and distinct brand, and overall must draw the viewer into the programming content in a subtle yet compelling way. In no way can this interactive content distract the broadcaster's viewership away from the underlying traditional television programming content. Instead, it must be successful at immersing their audience in the program with additional information on show characters and show-related topics.

Interactive content for the television space will need to be uniquely crafted in order meet both broadcaster and viewer requirements. Some content developers have the incorrect notion that they can simply re-broadcast their existing Internet content and this re-purposed Internet content will automatically be interesting to their viewing audience and meet broadcaster needs. This philosophy is dangerous because there are fundamental differences between the reasons why people surf the Internet and the reasons why people watch TV. Internet surfing is a ``lean-in'', active, ``let's find the information I'm looking for and get out'' experience, while television viewing is a ``lean-back'', passive, ''entertain me while I have a beer in one hand and a remote control in the other'' experience. Content developers, especially ones who have Internet content development experience, must keep this in mind when developing for the television medium.

In addition to viewer and broadcaster issues, there are also certain television design issues which content developers must bear in mind. These issues are:

• Simplify: Television viewers are unaccustomed to waiting for content to appear on their TVs or having to scroll down to see application content. To make things easier for viewers, television content developers should attempt to reduce the number of user interface widgets on the screen at one time and divide long, complex forms into multiple linked forms which are individually less complex.

• Use Color Wisely: Don't use bright red or bright white on your application forms. These colors tend to glow or bleed into other television screen elements. Television content developers should use "NTSC-safe" colors to help alleviate this problem. Also, viewers find that light-colored text against a dark-colored background is easier to read on a television screen.

• Avoid Small Text and Widgets: Viewers typically sit on a sofa anywhere from four to six feet away from the TV set, so small-sized text and small widgets are generally very difficult to see at this distance.

• Avoid Thin Horizontal Lines: Thin, horizontal lines display very poorly on today's television screens. If you wish to include horizontal lines in your application, make sure the line width is set to greater than one pixel.

To ease the effort required to create this content and thus enable the rapid creation of broadcast quality content, content developers should utilize a development platform that supports several key features:

• Portability: So content developers don't have to recreate their content for multiple platforms, they should adopt a platform such as the Java platform to support a "Write Once, Run Anywhere" capability for their content.

• Scalability: Whether it's one viewer who utilizes the content, or 1 million viewers, interactive television content must be able to scale rapidly and efficiently. Platforms such as the Java platform efficiently support content scalability.

• Networkability: Interactive television content will be deployed in broadband, two-way networks. Content developers will need to utilize a development platform such as the Java platform which is uniquely network-aware.

• Reusability: Television is fast moving medium. Due to this, television content developers don't have a lot of time to create content from scratch. They need a platform such as the Java platform which supports code reusability through object orientation to enable quicker time to broadcast readiness.

• Openness: Content developers and network operators alike do not want to be locked into a closed, proprietary technology to deliver their value-added services. Java technology is a completely open technology, defined through an open process by the marketplace which utilizes it.

The Java platform is the only content development and deployment platform which comprehensively supports all of the above characteristics uniquely well.

Innovative Opportunities for Advertisers

Interactive television applications will provide advertisers with a direct connection to their customer. Through this connection, advertisers will now have a direct measure of viewer response to advertisements and the ability to pursue only those customers showing an interest in the advertised product.

In addition, with interactive, on-demand information for an advertised product or service, advertising can now be extended beyond the usual 15 - 30 second time frame for a commercial. For example, when a viewer wishes to find out more about an advertised product or service, they can simply press a designated button on their remote control. This, in turn, launches an enhanced television applet which allows the viewer to see product specification and pricing information which may have not been present in the video portion of the advertisement due to ad-spot time constraints. If the set-top box supports a return path, the viewer will also be able to order the product or service with another press of a remote control button.

Allowing viewers to order products and services with their remote control enables an immediate completion of a "call-to-action" for those interested. In addition, this also provides a cost-effective solution for customer acquisition by eliminating the costly overhead of dedicated call centers to take product orders.

Having a two-way, broadband datapipe into the home also offers advertisers the unique opportunity to silently monitor and report back the television viewing habits of their audience. Although this does conjure up images of ``Big Brother'', it is important to note that such data, if taken anonymously and used in aggregate, can provide valuable insights to advertisers allowing them to analyze the effectiveness of a particular ad-spot and it's associated interactivity. For example, ad-spot statistics could be obtained which recorded the point at which a viewer tuned away from a particular advertisement, or conversely for a successful ad, at which point the viewer decided to order the product with their remote control. This type of data can help an advertiser fine-tune their ad-spot for maximum response.

Since digital television will bring into the home many more channels of content than were previously available, people are going to need a way to easily navigate the myriad of new channels and services. An application which does this is typically referred to as an electronic program guide (EPG) and it provides information on upcoming programming events and even allows a viewer to search for desired shows based upon a specific programming genre such as horror films, talk shows, comedies, etc. One unique opportunity for advertisers to take advantage of is the ability to place a banner ad on the opening screen of the EPG. Each time a viewer utilizes the EPG (and they will do so often) they will see the advertiser's banner ad and they will have the chance to respond to it with the press of a remote control button. The opening screen of an EPG will definitely become one of the prime advertising spots of the new digital television era,

Finally, targeted advertising can be achieved through the use of set-top resident viewer profiles which would match up the viewer's demographic, psychographic, and geographic characteristics with one of multiple advertisements that may be sent in a digital multiplex. If a match is achieved, the appropriate advertisement would be displayed to the viewer. If no match is possible, a default advertisement could be shown. An alternative storage mechanism for viewer profiles could be a Java smart card.

The Java platform, with it's ability to support all of the above advertiser requirements, will become the primary way to deliver interactive advertisements in the new digital television era.

Technical Issues in Dynamic Content Provision

In order to deliver compelling dynamic content to set-top boxes and digital television receivers, system operators must integrate a Java technology broadcast server into their networks. A Java technology broadcast server schedules and delivers Java technology interactive television content (i.e., in the form of Java bytecodes) into the digital multiplex. To do this in a timely fashion, it must be synchronized with the broadcaster's station clock. In order to support interactive advertisements, it must also be integrated with a broadcaster's digital asset management system so that the proper signaling can take place to ensure timely suspension and resumption of interactive advertisements associated with a particular digital video stream.

In order for interactive television applications to receive new data to enable media synchronization or GUI updates for applications such as stocktickers or sports scoreboards, Java servlets can be utilized to receive, parse, package and send resource updates down to a Java technology interactive television application currently being utilized. To support this, Java applications have access to an underlying event signaling mechanism which notifies the active application upon the arrival of new resource updates. Upon this notification, the application can choose to immediately update its user interface with this new information or wait until the appropriate time.

On the backend, a response collection and aggregation system must be in place to deliver valuable viewer feedback and transaction data to the appropriate sponsors. This system must be integrated with the network operator's customer billing system so the proper address and payment information for items ordered can be sent to the advertiser.

The Java platform, with its support for distributed computing, can efficiently support the demands of this network architecture.

Conclusion

In conclusion, we have seen how interactive television services will create new opportunities for television content developers, advertisers, system engineers and viewers. With these opportunities comes risk. Risk can be lowered by adopting the right technology to support the delivery of these new services. That right technology must be open, scalable, network-aware, portable, and it must support fast time to market through object-oriented code-reusability. That right technology is Java technology.