Backchannelmedia recently announced their TV-to-Internet technology was being trialed by LIN TV Corp. in New England, and now The Advertising Council will adopt the technology for use with their public service campaigns. The Ad Council’s use will coincide with the New England trials with LIN TV and will involve campaigns for Obesity Prevention, Inspiring Invention, Adoption, and Autism Awareness.

Backchannelmedia’s system allows viewers to respond to ‘bugs’ on the screen during viewing. The remote click sends a signal through the cable system to the back end to ‘bookmark’ content online for the user to review later. So if you see a PSA for adoption and you’re interested in more information you can click your remote, then later when you go online you’re reminded and given the chance to review more information.

I think this is a neat idea – one I’ve suggested TiVo do in the past. TiVo’s interactive ads and on-box content are great, but the reality is some interactions are better via the computer interface. I wouldn’t want to read in depth information about autism on my TV, but I’m curious enough that I might on my PC. TiVo has XMPP in place to handle real time messaging. They could send clicks to a user page on TiVo.com, or, better, to widgets on social sites like Facebook and MySpace, or right to TiVo Desktop – where they could pop open the users browser when desired.

Anyway, in general I like the idea of linking the TV and the computer, each does what it does very well and leveraging the capabilities of the other platform makes a lot of sense.

Press release:

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In the past couple of days I’ve had a couple of press releases cross my (virtual) desk relating to some new interactive TV technologies tied to advertising, which sound like they’re targeting the same market as TiVo’s interactive ad platform. The first to land was Backchannelmedia’s TV-to-Internet technology which is being tested by LIN TV Corp., a local television and digital media company, on the Hartford-New Haven stations WTNH-TV ABC 8 and WCTX-TV MyTV 9 starting in November.

The technology works by allowing viewers to press a button on their remote when a small icon appears on the bottom of the screen. This ‘bookmarks’ the content, or offer, which is then forwarded to a personal website which is incorporated into WTNH.com. I think this is an interesting approach, one I’ve suggested TiVo use for advanced content in the past. Some content is simply better presented on a computer. And this could allow less sophisticated platforms, like a non-DVR cable box, to provide a level of interactive content by offloading it to the website.

Generically, being able to bookmark things on a website would be useful in other ways. For example, a number of Discovery channel shows will say things like “Visit our website for more content/behind the scenes/etc”, and it would be great to be able to push a button on the remote at that point and have a link to the content waiting for you on the PC.

The second press release announced that Time Warner Cable has licensed elements of an Enhanced TV (ETV) platform from Broadband Interactive Applications (BIAP). BAIP’s ETV User Agent will be incorporated into Time Warner Cable’s advanced advertising platform. It will allow TWC’s STB’s to run Enhanced TV Binary Interchange Format (EBIF) applications, both created by TWC and third parties, such as the TV networks.

EBIF is a multimedia content format standard developed by the OpenCable project within CableLabs, which also developed OCAP/tru2way. EBIF is a core element of Canoe, a cable industry effort to develop an advanced advertising platform for all MSOs. Both the cable and broadcast industries will use EBIF to deliver advanced features to cable STBs.

The press releases are below:
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