DirecTV Goes Interactive

by Edward B. Driscoll, Jr.
Summer/Fall 2002

In the fall of 2000, DirecTV viewers saw new levels of interactivity emerge on their direct broadcast satellite services. While a number of advances were made, two important innovations stood out.

First, viewers who owned one of several qualifying RCA satellite receivers received a letter from DirecTV in late November 2000, with a headline that read, "Introducing DirecTV Interactive!"

Then, in the spring of 2001, Microsoft released UltimateTV, which combined DirecTV service, WebTV Internet access, interactive TV, picture-in-picture (heretofore missing on the satellite service) and a digital VCR into one $399 box.

So what do these interactive services offer viewers? How do they differ? And what else can we expect from DirecTV?

We spoke to DirecTV, UltimateTV and Wink executives last fall.

The Convenience of Wink
DirecTV Interactive, powered by software programs and firmware written by Wink Communications, added interactivity to numerous DirecTV channels. Richard Henderson, Wink's director of media relations, says that these interactive highlights include news, entertainment and shopping features.

"As far as news," Henderson says, "several all-news and all-sports channels include Wink-enabled interactivity. If you're watching CNN, you can get specific detailed news and information: world news, market news, financial news that type of information.

Bob Marsocci, DirecTV's senior director of communications, says, "Our customers who have this service really appreciate the convenience of being able to pull up, for instance, sports scores. I can attest to that as a customer. I'm a fan of the Boston Red Sox. When I get home, I want to see how the Sox are doing, so as opposed to waiting to see the scores on whatever channel I might be watching, I just automatically turn to ESPN, and within seconds, I can get the up-to-the-minute scores on Major League Baseball games and other sporting events."

Also in the morning, Marsocci says, rather than waiting for his PC to boot up or the ticker symbols to roll by on CNBC, "I turn on Bloomberg Television, and again, in a matter of seconds, with the press of a button on the remote control, I can check up to five different ticker symbols instantly. Then, if I want to key in others using the remote control, I can check the price of other stocks that I own."

With regard to shopping, Wink enables several opportunities. For instance, if you're watching The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, you can see who's going to be on that patricluar show read biographies of the guests. You can even purchase a musical guest's CDs.

Wink also adds interactivity to commercials and some infomercials. If you watch a Dodge ad on ESPN, for example, you'd see an "i" come up in the corner of the screen. Here, you may be presented with a question such as "Would you like to receive a brochure for this Dodge pick-up?" A Clorox ad might offer a free coupon. Wink signed deals with Time Inc. magazines. If you see a Sports Illustrated ad, you can immediately subscribe with your remote control.

The Destination Channels
Most features duplicate services that Wink runs on a variety of regional cable systems. But the extra bandwidth that DirecTV offers allows Wink to provide several dedicated "destination channels" comprised of nothing but Wink's interactive features. These channels include a customizable Weather Channel with instant access to regional weather, ESPN Today with sports scores and news, and most recently, a Barnes & Noble channel that lists its top 100 books.

Henderson says, "You can scroll through the list of the books. If you click on a book, you get its cover art and you also get information, like a synopsis of the book itself."

UltimateTV: The Swiss Army Knife of Set-top Boxes
While the Wink service is free to anyone who owns a compatible box (currently several RCA boxes, with Sony and possibly UltimateTV and TiVo for DirecTV in the near future), Microsoft's UltimateTV service requires an additional monthly subscriber fee in addition the viewer's current DirecTV fees.

The monthly fee for UltimateTV is $9.95, which includes three hours of Internet access. (Microsoft assumes that most users of the box will not be using it as their primary Internet source, unlike users of WebTV.) The same service with unlimited 'Net access is $29.95, or $14.95, if an existing ISP account is used. Of course, this is in addition to an existing DirecTV monthly fee, which varies based on the packages of channels, and other options.

Besides Internet access, what services do those fees include? Mark Mullen, a director for strategic planning for Microsoft UltimateTV, said the UltimateTV service includes live TV controls, digital video recording (35 hours) and a 14-day searchable program guide. It also contains interactive TV capability, three hours of Internet connect time and six e-mail accounts and automatic software upgrades.

So while UltimateTV is obviously more expensive than Wink, Mullen says that Wink somewhat limits the deepness and richness of the interactive experience, because it's designed as a thin-client system adaptable on several types of set-top boxes and uses a limited amount of internal memory. "UltimateTV is more open-ended," Mullen says, "which requires more development and more of an understanding and appreciation of where you're going to go with that thing, but it also means that you can deliver a variety of relatively rich experiences over the system, if you take advantage of the capability.

The Interactive Crime Scene
Similar to Wink, whenever a show is interactive, UltimateTV shows a little "i" in the corner of the screen. Perhaps the most unusual example of what UltimateTV's interactive features are is the interactivity it adds to CBS's CSI series, one of the very few dramatic television series currently using an interactive component.

Mullen says that clicking the interactive icon on the remote brings up an overlay, a "wraparound that lets you get access to information about forensic analysis techniques."

Additionally, there's an episode guide, interactive glossary of terms, a map of the Las Vegas area where the show takes place and biographies of the characters.

Does something like this require the optional keyboard that RCA and Sony make for their UltimateTV receivers? "Actually, most of the interactive shows are designed to work with the remote control," Mullen says, "because they're designed to be a TV experience. And many of the designers really try and work hard to make sure that you're not encumbered by input devices and that you're not encumbered by spelling requirements and things like that.

What's Next From DirecTV?
In addition to the Wink-driven Barnes & Noble channel, DirecTV plans to launch another interactive shopping channel. It will be, Marsocci expects, in partnership with Music Choice, DirecTV's audio provider. And he forecast that it would enable consumers to purchase items, such as CDs.

More intriguingly, there is the possibility of even more advanced interactivity, in the form of a possible "super-box." Currently, DirecTV's TiVo and UltimateTV boxes don't support Wink, and vice versa. Marsocci says, "I know that we have been looking at integrating some, if not all of these services into one box, and that's something that we will probably bring to market, but I don't have a time frame for that. These services haven't been around that long, and I think we want to hear back from our customers. We want to hear what they're telling us, we want to see what's happening at retail, before we take all of these and throw them into one box, because that may not be what the consumer wants.

Finally, DirecTV could add an even more advanced convergence of computer and television signals. It recently purchased Telocity, a DSL provider, and renamed its service DirecTV DSL. Marsocci says that Telocity has "a technology through their gateway box, and I think we're going to be looking at how to exploit that technology to offer new services to either the PC or the TV, or both. This is a ways off obviously, but it does give us another pipeline, another technology into the home."

Richard Henderson of Wink says, "Interactive TV has been talked about in the states for probably 20 years, and really just in the past year, we're starting to see some of the fruits of the ITV tree, so it's good time for ITV."

Bob Marsocci adds, "We've gone beyond delivering just traditional television, where you turn on your TV and you get audio and video. We now provide information on demand, pause, fast forward, rewind, digital video recording with our partners as well. So we continue to evolve as a service."

And viewers continue to evolve from couch-potato status to truly interactive, switched-on, hooked-up participants in entertainment, capable of generating far more from their TV sets than was thought possible even a decade ago.