LONDON (Inside Multimedia, Issue 226) – No DVD conference these days would be complete these days without the youthful presence of Todd Collart, president and CEO of InterActual, on the speaker podium. And so it was at the DVD Entertainment 2000 conference in Universal City. Todd had a speaker slot, the company also had a demo suite upstairs and an even grander suite on the 24th floor.
Trouble is, few of us are exactly sure what InterActual actually does. Whatever it is they are doing a lot of it. About 25 per cent of the 100 million DVD-Video discs that shipped in the United in 1999 were PCFriendly titles. That’s a staggering 25 million discs with Web enhanced content which could only be accessed on a PC. Not bad for a small company with 50 staff. The figure is more easily believable when you realise that DVD-Video is a hit-driven business and that a handful of blockbusters account for the majority of titles. Nearly all the Hollywood majors use PCFriendly and the success of The Matrix title alone accounts for many millions of that figure.
OK, so PCFriendly was present on many millions of DVD-Video discs. But how many people actually accessed the extra features? Research suggests that around 17 per cent were active online users of PCFriendly. Another 17 per cent probably accessed the extras on the disc, but never went online.
Commissioned market research from Centris on the US market, released at the show, reveal some surprising data on the US DVD market. There are 6.4 million US households with a DVD player. Nearly a third (two million) of these also have a DVD-Rom PC. Of those two million households, 50 percent said they also use their PC to watch movies. Furthermore, that two million base purchase 16 percent more than those who have only a DVD-Video player. Speaker after speaker at the Hollywood conference emphasised the importance of ‘extras’ as the way to add value to DVDs. Web connectivity adds even more value because it gives the publisher a direct connection to its public.
The company makes the software tools to allow other people to create web enhanced DVD titles. It doesn’t make content, neither the movies nor the ‘extras’ which make DVD unique. Nor does it make conditional access systems to unlock DVD titles via the Web. In theory InterActual is everyone’s friend. Indeed Todd Collart told us that a cottage industry has been created in the Los Angeles area – small companies building DVD titles using its software tools.
Think of the InterActual software as the glue that bonds the content and the platform. It has three main ingredients: browser, HTML and JavaScript, plus support for multiple DVD navigators. The combination of these ingredients offers an abstraction layer or API that provides cross platform compatibility – PC, Mac or Web-enabled set-top box in the next iteration of the software.
With PCFriendly shipping on over 35m discs worldwide you would think that Todd Collart was happy. But no, there are fresh mountains to conquer. Nothing short of world domination will suffice (it’s the American way). PC Friendly was well named because it would only run on the Windows PC. InterActual is developing its software so that content can be delivered on multiple platforms.
This has led to the release of InterActual Player 2.0. This is a complete media playback architecture that allows content to be authored once and delivered across multiple platforms. It virtually sets the standard for Web connected DVD devices. As well as supporting most browsers for Windows PCs it now supports the Mac, as well as the emerging breed of Web-connected set-top DVD players, such as the well-publicised Nuon players.
The fact that so few exist at the moment is a mere trifle; few would dispute the claim that the Web-connected set-top DVD player is the next big thing. There is not much point in adding DVD functionality to a Web-connected set-top box if you don’t utilise that connectivity to enhance the viewing experience.
Trouble is that the Japanese manufacturers have been too busy trying to meet the demand for plain vanilla DVD-Video players. No-one has sat down and thought about the issues. What do you need to add to a DVD players to make it smart? You need an adapter port to attach a modem of one kind or another. You need a navigation device such as a mouse or a keyboard. And you need navigator (browser) software burned in to the firmware.
VM Labs has gone a long way towards that with its Nuon device but the first iteration, the Samsung player, doesn’t have Web connectivity. Sony PlayStation 2 won’t have connectivity at launch. So clearly there is some way to go. However, it is worth making the point that Internet connectivity is not the be all and end all. Indeed, ‘browser-enabled devices’ would be a more accurate description of this technology. You don’t have to be connected to the Web to access the disc, or the extra goodies on it. What is true is that without the Web we would not have the browser, the HTML and the Javascript that, have made this development possible.
InterActual works closely with the embedded browser companies. Chief among these are Planetweb, Ravisent, Access (Japanese) and Liberate (an $8bn Silicon Valley start-up spun out of Oracle and Netscape). Apart from the browser the other essential ingredients are the navigation layer and the interface which InterActual supply. The interface is written in HTML and JavaScript (not Java because that would require too much horsepower).
Collart would like to integrate BCA into the specification. This is the Burst Cutting Area bar code on the inner ring of the DVD disc that is mandatory in the DVD-Rom spec. Since the death of Divx (which used BCA as the centrepiece of its security system) Panasonic Disc Services Corporation (PDSC) in Torrance, California has carried the torch for BCA. Collart is working with Panasonic and Warner (both investors) as well as several other replicators on integrating BCA as an industry-wide initiative.
This release of Player 2.0 overcomes many of the perceived limitations of PCFriendly. It automatically recognises and plays any DVD, with or without the InterActual software.
Anyone who tells you that online is going to make DVD obsolete real soon is an idiot. DVD is merely packaged bandwidth – cheap, convenient and always there. It is also a way of actually getting paid for your work. But DVD cannot afford to stand still. DVD has stolen some of the Internet’s clothes and is the better for it. The applications for Web enhanced DVD are limited only by the imagination. By connecting the audience to bonus content you transform a passive experience into an interactive experience. Your title can include web updates, message boards, e-commerce opportunities, interstitial advertising, screen savers, and even live chat events. Think beyond the Hollywood movie or the music video. Think about the applications in advertising and marketing and in education and training.
The Web-enhanced DVD is just about the most exciting thing around at the moment. Clearly InterActual have the market sewn up, for the moment. There is urgent need for an international standard, which can be open to all, and the Haiku group of the DVD Association is working with InterActual on that.
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