Mixed Signals Technologies (MST), which maintains offices in Culver City, Calif., and Middlebury, Conn., is a company specializing in interactive television (ITV) technology and production. The firm recently launched its Interactive Producer Bundle, a suite of low-cost ITV hardware and software tools designed to enable traditional video, Internet and multimedia producers to generate broadcast-ready ITV content. The Interactive Producer Bundle started shipping this month for $1,995.
The Producer Bundle was developed because executives at MST believe that over the next few years an increasing number of content creators—whether they are programmers or advertisers—are going to start wanting to deal with the interactivity function in-house. The bundle includes MST’s proprietary software, called TV Link Creator 2.0, scheduling software and an Insertalink desktop Advanced Television Enhancement Forum (ATVEF) data encoder. ATVEF is a cross-industry alliance of companies representing the broadcast and cable networks, television transports, consumer electronics, and PC industries. This alliance of companies has defined protocols for Hypertext Markup Language (HTML)-based enhanced television, which allow content creators to deliver enhanced programming over all forms of transport (analog, digital, cable and satellite) to any intelligent receivers.
These aforementioned combined products from MST provide users with seamless frame-accurate data scheduling and encoding functionality. Additionally, MST entered into a deal with ITV software company SpinTV, Dallas, to include the SpinTV Studio Suite in the Interactive Producer Bundle. The SpinTV product is an ATVEF-compliant content development tool that enables designers, content developers, and production houses to use Macromedia Dreamweaver to author ITV content. (Dreamweaver is a software package that allows for the creation of Web pages. SpinTV has created an extension to the Dreamweaver product, which is specific to the development of HTML pages for set-top box platforms.) The Interactive Producer Bundle has not yet been used on any specific project as it has just started shipping. However, the components that make up the bundle have been used by various postproduction houses and broadcasters to make content interactive.
In making interactive programming, the enabling process requires two fundamental stages, explains Steve Schein, MST’s senior VP/chief strategic officer. The first is the physical insertion of links and triggers into the program, which signals the applications that run in a home set-top box. For example, making a program such as Jeopardy! interactive, requires the insertion of up to 300 of these triggers. So, an operator will go through the program, insert the links and triggers at the appropriate times, and the TV Link Creator software merges that information with the closed captioning data to create a data file associated with that particular episode of the program or advertisement. "At that point, the data needs to be inserted into the program material itself—the video and the audio—and that’s what the encoder does," notes Schein. "The output is the program data that ultimately gets used by the broadcaster. The tools to make all this happen have been traditionally very expensive."
"The Interactive Producer Bundle is an excellent starting point for any producer wanting to break into ITV," contends Caroline Beck, MST’s president/CEO, who joined the company in January, succeeding its co-founder, Alex Thompson, who is no longer involved with the company on a day-to-day basis, but continues to serve on the board of directors. "The intention was to assemble ‘best of breed’ technologies into one bundle that will almost be a starter kit or a plug-in and play for any producer that wants to add interactivity [to his menu of options]."
Beck expects that the producer bundle will appeal to any creator that wants to get into producing ITV content. This covers a wide range—from advertising agencies, production companies, large studios and independent producers to Web developers.
"From our perspective, video is video, and in inserting a link—whether it is for an ad or a program—the discipline is the same," Beck states. "I think there is a great deal of attraction on the programming side, and there’s an increasingly strong indicator that the advertising community is stepping up to the plate to create interactivity in its spots."
For MST there were important business reasons to lower the entry point for creating ITV content. "From our perspective, the producer bundle is great for the industry, and as the industry grows there’s more of a market for our other products, as well," explains Beck. "It is definitely a market catalyst on our part." In addition to the aforementioned bundle, the MST family of products provides broadcast, satellite and cable operators with solutions for the commercial deployment of interactive services.
Citing client confidentiality, Beck could not reveal which companies have thus far purchased the bundle, but did say that interest in the product has been significant—something she attributes to her claim that MST’s plug-in is one of the first to be offered in the interactive marketplace. She also couldn’t give detailed examples of how the bundle has been used, but says that in the first quarter of this year, MST had produced over 440 hours of interactive content covering ads, television programs, live events, and pre-produced events in the range of genres.
Although Beck could not give specifics at press time as to what firms were purchasing the bundle, several commercial production shops have expressed interest in and support for the new technology. Among them are Beyond Z Interactive Media, Atlanta, and Random/ Order, Culver City, which currently deploy MST’s production tools to develop ITV content.
Karen Lennon, chief executive officer at Beyond Z Interactive Media, which has previously used the tools which make up the bundle, praises the new package: "The ITV Producer Bundle has given the Beyond Z production team an efficient way to trigger and encode ITV content for our clients," she reports. "This bundled offering will benefit the fledgling ITV industry with a necessary piece of infrastructure at an attainable price."
Execs with Microsoft TV and Liberate, two ITV-enabling platforms, have also expressed strong support for the launch of the bundle, as it provides affordable tools for the production of standards-based ITV content. "It’s a great solution for professional video and Web producers who want to generate ITV content today," says Charlie Tritschler, VP of marketing at Liberate Technologies, which is headquartered in San Carlos, Calif. "Liberate aggressively supports the development of ITV content and tools based on open standards."
Prior to creating the bundle, MST has been involved in many types of ITV programming. Some of that programming, which has used technology now available in the Interactive Producer Bundle, includes interactive versions of the game shows Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune, which allow viewers with interactive-enabled set-top boxes (such as those supplied by WebTV, TiVo, AOLTV and Liberate Technologies) to play along with on-screen contestants. MST has also been involved in several different forms of interactive programming, including the 2001 Grammy Awards, the 2001 NCAA Men’s College Basketball Tournament, E! Fashion Emergency, Family Feud and HBO Boxing After Dark. MST has contributed to interactive commercials for clients such as Ford, Claritin and Volvo.
In addition to developing its Producer Bundle, MST has formed strategic alliances with partner companies in order to collaborate in the ITV space. One of these is bicoastal/ international Cylo itv, the convergent media company headed up by Julie Atherton, who also maintains an autonomous commercial production shop, bicoastal Cylo tvc. Per the alliance with MST, Cylo itv will act as a preferred provider of ITV consulting and production services for MST in return for ITV infrastructure technologies. The two companies worked together earlier this year to produce an earlier alluded to interactive campaign for Volvo Cars of North America, via Messner Vetere Berger McNamee Schmetterer/Euro RSCG, New York, which ran during the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) men’s basketball tournament (SHOOT, 3/30, p.1). Footage from a previously produced broadcast commercial—"Forward" directed by Peter Smillie of Smillie Films, Santa Monica—was re-cut into a spot called "Golden Steering Wheel." This ad, in turn, was re-edited and re-tracked to create the spot that aired during the NCAA. The aim was used to drive traffic to Volvo’s revolvolution.com Web site, where viewers could participate in a contest to win a Volvo S60 sports sedan.
Another alliance that MST has entered into is with interactive and broadcast design firm H Design, Hollywood. Per that strategic partnership, H Design will act as a provider of ITV design, and MST will provide ITV production experience.
MST was formed in 1999 following the merger of two companies: Mixed Signals Technologies, which was founded by Thompson and chief technology officer Sam Barone in ’97, with the mission to make television programming interactive; and Ultech, a manufacturer of video products for broadcast and postproduction. The latter firm was founded by Drake Smith in ’91 and previously specialized in closed-captioning, teletexting, subtitling and vertical blanking interval (VBI) data insertion. After the merger, it was decided that the newly formed entity would keep the Mixed Signals moniker; Smith is founder/COO of the present-day MST.
Other key executives in the company are the aforementioned Beck and Schein; Christoph Pachler, senior VP/chief financial officer; and Joe Franzetta, senior VP of corporate development and strategy.
MST is divided into two business groups: the ITV Professional Services unit and ITV Networking Solutions. The former generates about 80 percent of MST’s current revenue, and is the portion of the company that actually creates and produces the interactive programming for such clients as Sony Pictures Digital Entertainment, Game Show Network, CBS, HBO, Discovery Channel, The Weather Channel and Pearson Television.
The Networking Solutions division of the company is made up of the software and hardware tools, which are a suite of products that manage ITV data from inception through to delivery into the home. The tools fall into three product classes: Networked ITV Data Insertion, ITV Automation and Management, and Networked ITV Service Auditing. ITV Data Insertion—which the Interactive Producer Bundle falls into—caters to content originators, post houses, networks, and the program broadcast environment. The flagship hardware in this area is the DV2000, a rack-mounted, dual-channel encoder launched five years ago and built on the Windows NT platform. This is accompanied by the aforementioned TV Link Creator software.
The ITV Automation and Management category centers around ITVauto, which was launched at this year’s National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) convention, and is an ITV-specific network automation system enabling operators to efficiently broadcast or uplink real-time and program-synchronous ITV data. ITV Service Auditing consists of: ITVsentry, which allows broadcast, satellite and cable operators to monitor and report ITV data flowing through the VBI of NTSC and PAL video; and ITVfirewall. The latter is designed to actively filter ITV links and triggers, serving as the operator’s gatekeeper for VBI data.
Beck defines ITV as falling into five categories: electronic program guides (EPG), interactive advertising, video on demand, interactive programming and television commerce. The latter refers to buying online via television rather than PCs—for example, a viewer with a set-top box could click on a car or jacket featured in an ad, and either purchase the product or find out more information about it.
She proposes that ITV will not follow traditional adaptation curves. Instead of demand accelerating over time, she believes ITV will go from having low penetration to mass availability. This is because the availability depends on cable operators installing greater numbers of the necessary technology in the home—the set-top boxes.
"If we had fifteen million boxes in homes today, we couldn’t service those boxes because the broadcast infrastructure is not yet ready for it," Beck states. "Therefore, a critical phase of the success of ITV rests squarely with the broadcast infrastructure environment, which will be driven by content originators and advertisers who recognize that they have to start creating products to filter through that infrastructure."
