Core features

The CoTV™ Web service provides a viewer-specific focal point to organize and promote all PC-based user interaction related to TV viewing, including direct access to enhancements to any and all programs as they are viewed. Unlike conventional, dumber forms of "sync-TV," it fully coordinates with channel changes, VOD, DVRs, trick-play, and addressable targeting.

• Advertising enhancement smart-sync - fully synchronized windows for direct response and supplementary content related to ads (with full activity tracking). Advertiser funded incentives can be offered to stimulate regular use.
• Program enhancement smart-sync - fully synchronized windows for content and interaction. Coverage can be phased in special-interest channel/program genres aimed at groups of heavy interactors:
  • Sports
  • News (general, financial, etc.)
  • Movies
  • Games, Reality, Kids, etc.
• Smart Electronic Program Guides (EPGs) - presented in high-resolution format, under viewer control, including power grids, sophisticated program discovery tools and organizers, and rich magazine format alternatives, using advanced personalization with 100% private filters and intelligent agent / recommender functions, and with direct linkage to TV tuning

The CoTV Web service can operate much like an ordinary Web portal (and can be seamlessly integrated into an ordinary Web portal) -- it simply adds support to relate Web pages to TV-context (and vice versa).

The Web service/portal can do this based on linkage of the TV and PC over various forms of home networking.  The TV link need only report and respond to channel changes – that can be done using digital TVs, set-top-boxes, DVD players, game players, media adapters, or gateways like the Media Center PC. 

The Media Center PC is particularly attractive because of its open, extensible software platform (Windows XP Media Center Edition and soon Vista), and its presence in millions of homes, growing to tens of millions.  Improving PC technology (such as Intel Viiv) improves the suitability of this platform for living room use, and the dynamic entrepreneurial nature of the PC software business ecology promise to make this into a powerful entertainment platform.  (This also applies to other PC software platforms such as Apple and Linux, and to other PC hardware sources such as AMD.)

An example of an advanced gateway configuration using the Media Center Extender is as shown below.

This builds on the standard function of a Media Center PC, which acts like (or with) a set-top box to power TV viewing (whether to a PC monitor or to a larger TV screen), as in the upper portion of the diagram.  The Media Center Extender permits driving a TV that might be across the room, or even multiple TVs in multiple rooms driven from a central gateway server.   It supports the TV with the remote control as a "lean-back" (or "ten-foot") user interface.

The addition of CoTV to the Media Center gateway enables additional PCs in each room (such as wireless laptops) to be coordinated with the TV in that room, as shown in the lower portion of the diagram. 

• This offers the viewer coordinated use of both a "lean-back" (or "ten-foot") user interface, and a "lean-forward" (or "two-foot") userface. 
• The PC could be the Media Center PC itself (possibly with multi-monitor support to drive both a TV and the PC monitor), or preferably a separate laptop or tablet
• This can be used in a single room (with a standard Media Center PC without need for an extender).
• This can also support multiple users (or groups of users) with TVs in multiple rooms (using multiple extenders), each coordinated as an independent  group by CoTV software. 

Note how this adds an entirely new dimension to the Media Center experience: 

• Typical use cases for the Media Center PC make use of just a single screen at any given time.  If an across-the-room TV monitor is used, it is routinely controlled using the "ten foot interface" that appears on that screen, and the PC screen is generally ignored.  Thus it behaves much like a standard TiVo, using only the TV screen.
• With CoTV, in contrast, the suggested use case is with a separate laptop that can interact with the Media Center PC over WiFi.  Thus the viewer has simultaneus use of both the "ten foot" interface primarily for viewing the video, with the additional fucntionality of the "two foot interface" on the laptop.  In such cases the laptop can serve as a primary interface for rich "remote control" interaction with the Media Center (for both video control and for coactive Web browsing). Of course, the "ten-foot" TV screen interface can continue to serve, secondarily, for quick, casual interactions when desired.
• And, for your next Super Bowl party...  Extend this to multiple laptops (or mobile phones, etc.), belonging to each viewer, each of whom can interact with supplementary information, replays, etc. without any interference with the TV viewing of the others -- but retaining the ability to put replays, or other content, onto the big screen when desired.

Similar home network based services can be driven using CoTV software with DVRs such as TiVo, or with intelligent network media adapter devices.

Benefits to Media Center PC/gateway providers

• Adding value to the PC/gateway by enabling advanced services that may be superior to those offered by cable or satellite operators using proprietary set-top box/gateway systems

Benefits to Portal operators

• Control of smart-sync information enables a unique ability to offer a wide range of Web-based services that others cannot match.
• Advertiser fees can be obtained for smart-sync services, and substantial t-commerce revenue or performance-based fees can be generated by direct response to TV ads.
• Allied Web-based services can achieve high margin by leveraging viewer interest and activity relating to TV and the CoTV™ Portal
• Subscriber fees might be obtained for smart-sync services, once consumer awareness of their value is established (such as after a trial period).
• No customer premises capital expense is required, since no new customer premises equipment is needed. Proliferation of wireless laptops, PC tablets, and Media Center PCs/gateways, along with WiFi networks (driven by demands other than CoTV), will encourage increased usage.

Benefits to viewers, programmers, and advertisers

• Viewers can obtain powerful TV-related Web features that exploit their Web-savvy and minimize interference with TV viewing, with almost no added effort. The CoTV™ Web Portal coordinates seamlessly with the TV to create a powerful, user-centric control center for TV-related Web features -- one that supports serious interactivity and flexible multitasking. (And smart-sync data privacy can be fully contolled.)  See Why I want my CoTV™.
• Advertisers can achieve the full benefit of rich interactivity and direct response to make their expenditures far more productive and accountable, and can leverage current Web skills, standards, and back-end systems.   See Integrating TV and Web Advertising.
• Programmers can develop a full range of enhancements to build audience involvement without the severe constraints of one TV screen, and can leverage Web skills and standards.  Traffic to programmer enhancement sites will increase as users are automatically linked to relevant enhancements, without need to know of their existence and their URL (and without need for costly on-air promotion).

No barriers to crossing the chasm

There are no fundamental or steep hurdles to rapid deployment and contagious growth to scale.

• CoTV™ Web Portals can be introduced with basic EPG and smart-sync advertising features, possibly starting with a content focus such as movies or sports, and grow as usage and content explands
• Millions of households already have all needed equipment, and many more will soon.
• Subscriber growth will be facilitated by proliferation of wireless laptops and tablets, as well as the gateway devices, and home networks
• Peer exposure and word of mouth can produce viral demand that is readily accomodated
• National reach can be achieved from day one
• Advanced features are fully supportable: VOD, DVRs, trick-play, and addressable targeting
• Adoption of basic "two-screen" CoTV™ service can stimulate demand for "one-screen" interactivity on the TV screen, as a fully compatible extension

Richard Reisman -- Bio
Consulting/About