Industry's first personalized video mosaic solution

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ICTV announced that it will demonstrate the first subscriber-customizable video mosaic for improved video-rich navigation next week at the CableLabs Winter Conference in Colorado Springs. ICTV’s mosaic solution, the initial result of its recent merger with Switched Media, will enable cable system operators, programmers and integrators to deploy the video industry’s first interactive multichannel mosaics that can be aligned to reflect individual subscribers’ viewing preferences. In addition to providing live video from, and navigation through, multiple channels simultaneously, the ICTV technology will enable personal mosaics to be assembled by subscriber, operator or programmer choice, or via system response to subscriber viewing habits, all on any digital set- top box. During the February 26-28 conference at The Broadmoor, ICTV will show how its technology enables subscribers to create tailored navigational mosaics. The demonstration will include compilation of six live video feeds from a large group of channels, navigation and channel selection via the mosaic, and insertion of new favorites into the mosaic to meet changes in viewing needs. ICTV also will demonstrate the capability of blending interactive elements, including targeted advertising, within the mosaic screens.

"Customized mosaics enable video rich navigation, which is the ultimate personal TV experience," said Jeff Miller, president and CEO of ICTV. "As more and more content choices become available to consumers from multiple sources, the ability to help them find and choose programming of interest is imperative. ICTV’s personalized mosaic technologies meet viewers’ needs while offering operators, programmers and advertisers the opportunity to interact one on one with each subscriber."

Using standard rack-mounted PC hardware and operating systems, InStream live stream processing technology acquired with Switched Media cost-effectively creates video tiles and composites them in real time into a single stream of video, along with Web elements, tickers and navigational buttons. ICTV technology can create hundreds of personalized mosaics in a single computer blade, creating a cost-effective, highly scalable solution. The mosaic streams, which contain audio for all tiles and the metadata necessary to enable channel tuning, require minimal network resources - as little as one fifth of the bandwidth of a broadcast channel or VOD stream and only the channel tuning and return path capabilities from any digital set-top box.

Unlike proprietary solutions, the ICTV mosaic solution is supported by standard Web tools and infrastructure, providing designers of video rich navigation the full pallet of colors, graphics and interactive elements that are available on the Internet. ICTV provides the enabling infrastructure that allows subscriber interaction with all of the mosaic elements, including programming, information and navigational options, as well as advertisements that are targeted, auditable and interactive.

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