Network Insight Institute

Session 2 - Discussion

Session 2 - Discussion

WILLIAM ATKINS, malcolm long associates: One of the great issues facing any market entering a digital situation is that universal national standards no longer apply. There is going to be a much greater break-up, subsets of subsets of subsets, in terms of the consumer offering and in terms of consumer choice. That is a mindset that doesn't sit comfortably with the idea of a universal set-top box roll out, which several years ago many people, including me, thought was probably not a bad idea.

DUANE VARAN, Interactive Television Research Institute: I think it has been great that we have had a little bit of discussion about a range of possibilities in terms of what new types of organisational structures might work for things like back channels etc. There is another possibility to the 'Platform Co'. Even the ISP model that you presented, Jason, was kind of a single ISP provider for funding this roll out.

Another possibility is a TVSP model. With this model, anybody who wants to can underwrite set-top boxes going into homes and in return for that, they are participating in the revenue of the back channel. So it is no longer a model that necessarily has one player, as owning the entire back end architecture. In fact, I would argue that multiple players in that game could be a good thing because it creates competitive pressure. So you actually have an incentive for people to push set-top boxes into homes. In return for access to the common infrastructure that is required to fuel that, there could be certain quality control provisions which the players, who chose to do that, would have to comply with. These might include a legacy clause, so that the box that they roll out would have to be replaced in 'x' years (say 5 years). This way you actually have a provision there to help prevent legacy issues long term.

So we would create an environment which would maximise the participation of many players, rather than one player. At the same time we would ensure that there is a minimum quality control threshold being preserved and protected.

CHRIS WINTER, ABC: I am picking up on the point that was made in Session One about collaboration. In disagreement with Mark Hughes, I think the need to collaborate is the single most difficult thing about what we are doing at the moment. Technology, not to trivialise it, can do anything that you want it to do, in time. In my view what is not working is the collaborative side of what we might achieve by working together. An example is the one that Jason Romney just mentioned. Even with the crippled, ridiculously expensive, hopeless box that is on the market, we do have an opportunity to display an EPG, and yet no one can agree on how to do it.

On the evidence that we have to date, there is possibly two stations who are making a fist of presenting this pitiful amount of information on the television screen. The other channels can't even manage to do that. One of the things that makes an interactive application successful is surely its usefulness, and there is actually nothing more useful than an EPG.

The UK experience with Sky is that people are putting the book to one side, and are relying on the onscreen EPG to work out what's coming up. I think it is called The Evening Ahead. It is what they're focusing on. It is a brilliant application: it is the only application that replaces the one we have at the moment, the book, and yet no one is talking about it.

To me that is a great starting place and I wish we would start talking about it. I know why it is so sensitive; it's a great piece of real estate, and various people want to own it. It is also a great place to advertise and sell things. But we need to come to grips with it. If we can't deal with the EPG, which is common to all our needs and the common user's needs, then we will never come to an agreement on other principally more momentous things.

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