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Click Here for ABC Enhanced TV
Click Here for the Oscars.com
Click Here for the Oscars.org
Click Here for ABC News coverage of the Oscars
Also, the Oscar Awards on ABC Enhanced TV went up against a repeat broadcast of "Homicide: The Movie" on NBC TV and which
had commercials promoting a concurrent telewebber auction of memorabilia from the "Homicide: Life On The Street" television series.
Earlier in the day during the afternoon, there was also the continuing interactive "March Madness" broadcast of the NCAA Mens
Basketball Tournament on CBS TV with Microsoft UltimateTV and WebTV Plus. You can
click here for news about the NBC telewebber auction.
And you can click here for news about the CBS-UltimateTV-WebTV
broadcast of NCAA "March Madness" basketball.
Additionally, on the cable side, the E! Channel has its continuing coverage of the Oscars. Compare these WebTV Plus and AOLTV
screen shots with the PC-TV telewebber experience. The TV broadcast is in the top left corner of the WebTV Plus and AOLTV
screen shots (you can also go full screen without the interactivity). TV viewers may prefer the single screen experience
whether with set-top boxes or PC-TV systems.
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March 25, 2001 - The first caption link for the screen shot goes to the ABC Enhanced TV webpage for the Oscar Awards show. The "enhanced TV" broadcast
is intended to provide a two-screen interactive experience and required a TV set tuned to the ABC TV broadcast and
a PC logged onto the the ABC Enhanced TV website. If you have a PC-TV where you have a PC box equipped with a internal
TV Tuner card, you can have a one-screen interactive television experience watching the Oscar Awards where you can put the
TV broadcast picture in a resizeable window so you can participate in the "enhanced TV" interaction with Oscar trivia and quizes
that are pushed to the web browser. Or on a PC-TV one-screen system, you can go to full-screen TV mode to simply
watch the broadcast.
WebTV Plus screen shot of E! coverage of the Academy Awards
(There should be a similar screen layout on Microsoft UltimateTV)
AOLTV screen shot of E! coverage of the Academy Awards
You can click here for ABC News coverage of the Oscar Awards.
You can also click here for E! Online's
website coverage of the Oscars. And you can click here to go to the Microsoft UltimateTV website, or
here to go to the Microsoft WebTV website, or here to go to the AOLTV website.
The news announcement about the "First-Ever Interactive Academy Awards Telecast" states the
"enhanced TV" interactivity includes a "push channel" of enhanced graphics, polls, and movie trivia
synchronized with the TV broadcast as well as a "Predict the Winner" game with prizes for top scorers.
Reuters quotes Walt Disney Internet Group's Enhanced TV vice president and general manager Rick Mandler as stating,
"These are first steps toward interactive TV, a business that's embryonic at best, which is why we do it as a two-screen
experience right now. The goal here is to enhance the TV viewing experience and offer companion content, and that's
what we are doing for the Oscars." But if you have a PC-TV with a PC with a TV Tuner card installed, then you can have
a single-screen experience on the PC screen. Otherwise for ABC TV's "Enhanced TV," and other similar telewebber
activities, you would need to have a PC and a separate TV for the two-screen experience. -ruel
Digital Television magazine quotes Walt Disney Internet Group/ABC Enhanced Television division senior vice president and
general manager Jonathan Leess as stating, "Corporate took our five-year plan and cut it back to a nine-month window. They
preferred that we prove there was an actual business before committing to extensive resources and expense.... We decided
to focus on the Internet, because the Internet had the largest installed base and created an instant two-way connection with a
critical mass market of homes with a TV and computer.... I think one of the greatest challenges [for one-screen TV interactivity]
will be to figure out what enhancements and interactive advertisements will be accepted by the TV viewer and who's offering them."
Digital Television magazine cites ABC Enhanced TV production and programming director Tim Pernetti as indicating
ABC's "Enhanced TV" two-screen telewebbing experience is frequently "misunderstood by people who haven't seen it in action.
It's not competition for television, and it's not television streamed over the Internet." Digital Television magazine further quotes
Pernetti as stating, "It's interactive television, complete. It pulls you through the telecast to the Internet and vice versa. We are
assisting the broadcast arm of this company to use the Internet as a conduit to bring those people back to television."
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