OpenTV Like TiVo on Steroids

Davis Freeberg writes "Davis Freeberg and Thomas Hawk recently interviewed OpenTV about some of the more progressive programming that they are offering to viewers outside of North America. Specifically, they have created a PVR that allows users to not only choose from 4 - 8 video angles, but even more importantly consumers can choose what audio feed they would prefer. Recently they miked up some drunk hooligans during a rugby match in Austrailia and cable customers could choose which commentator they prefered. Of course this functionality doesn't come without a cost. In exchange for interactive games, karaoke and multiple HDTV streams, they collect data on the viewing habits of their users and then digitally insert 30 second ads based upon the demographics of their customers. While I'm not sure if this is good or bad, I do believe that this will be the future of television advertising. While we haven't seen this type of a privacy policy introduced in the U.S. yet, I'm sure that the PVR industry has taken notice of the willingness of Aussies to give up privacy rights for the ability to time shift televison. "

Comments

Innovation== Dead

[Anonymous Coward]

As for PVR innovation, US is ion the dead end. Tell me ONE single innovative thing that has been innovated in the DVR business in the last 2 years. MPAA has scared the DVR companies into turning their DVRs into nothing but fancy digital VCRs.

What are my justifications for this comment of mine, you say? Alright. Remember Replay TV? They introduced the Commercial Advance; This technology was one which would AUTOMATICALLY detect commercial breaks for you & skip them, AUTOMATICALLY!! No more lame 30-second skip 'easter egg' of TiVo. They had Internet Video Sharing. They had absolutely best home networking for DVRs. These were the innovations which were really revolutionary in the DVR biz. Then MPAA sued the pants off Replay TV & forced them into bankuruptcy.

For all the TiVo fans out there, compare the features of Replay TV & TiVo. See. MPAA has killed innovation in the industry. Nobody wants to innovate something new in the DVR industry. Thats the reason all the DVR offerings from cable/sat providers as well as pioneers Replay & TiVo have basically stopped doing any substantial innovation.

Sad.

NOT TiVo on steroids

[Overzeetop]

TiVo on steriods would be gobs of hours, enhanced sorting and archiving functions, multiple tuners, and lots of stuff the end users want.

Thisis more like TiVo after an experiment went wrong and it was mutated by gamma radiation before it killed all the scientists and escaped from the lab. I mean, look at the focus - straight from the source,

our real customers, in most cases are network operators, in the context of deals between network operators and programmers or advertisers we can certainly provide services, but we're clear who the primary customer is.

They admit they don't really give a rats ass about the people with the remote, except how they can serve their eyeballs up as a product for their "real customers". That said, in a perfect world, the multiple audio options would be nice for certain programming like football. Being able to choose your commentators would be a welcome change. Anyone who has suffered through a national College FB feed where the commentators are clearly against your team (Brent Mussberger calling any Virginia Tech game, for example) or any game where the commentator just annoys the hell out of you (John Madden for football, Dick Vitale for basketball) would realize the value in this feature. Multiple camera angles would be minimally useful, unless I could get multiple feeds of the same game, and had enough screen to watch them all.