New Showtime Interactive TV Service Wedded to LG LivePlus Smart TV Platform

The announcement Thursday -- datelined New York -- was made in one of the cities where many cable subscribers are blacked out of programming from Showtime and other CBS-owned networks due to the ongoing dispute with Time Warner Cable over a retransmission consent contract (CD Aug 6 p2).

The partnership combining LG’s LivePlus synchronous content platform and Showtime’s SHO Sync technology has produced the “first in-program interactive experience for smart TVs,” David Preisman, Showtime vice president-interactive television, told us at a pre-briefing at his company’s New York offices Wednesday. SHO Sync, available as an iPad companion app “for a while,” allows users to “play along” with TV programming, Preisman said. SHO Sync detects the show based on audio cues and provides interactive options -- some 10-12 per episode in Dexter, for instance.

The interactive content Showtime demoed for us included polls asking viewers questions about what they thought would happen in upcoming scenes and included live tallying of votes placed by other fans using the technology. Other content included flashbacks users could click on to get a refresher on a character or a storyline. Viewers can earn points or badges based on answers to trivia questions and compete with other fans, Preisman said. Interactive segments last 6-7 seconds, he said. Preisman and Wendell Wenjen, LG director-advertising & interactive TV, noted that LG’s Magic Motion Remote is key to the ease of use aspect of the interactivity for consumers. They can point the remote to highlight a selection and then press the enter button to cast a vote.

SHO Sync is starting first with Dexter and Ray Donovan, although Showtime has interactive content written for 200 shows, Preisman said. The network is “very carefully rolling it out, making sure everything is working properly,” to protect the content, he said. The first two shows were selected for their popularity, Preisman said, despite Dexter’s end of run with this season. Based on focus group research, Showtime learned that fans of the two shows are “rabid for content” and watch the shows “over and over again,” he said. “This technology gives people more of a reason to replay.” He added that Showtime has interactive content going back several seasons.

Showtime has interactive content for seasons seven and eight of Dexter and seasons one and two of Homeland. Preisman couldn’t guarantee the first show of Homeland would go interactive when it airs next month. “We might introduce it the day after to make sure everything is solid,” he said, citing the difference between experimenting with “someone’s TV” versus delivering apps on a tablet where users are likely more technology-forgiving. “If there’s an error message while I'm watching TV, there’s a problem here,” he said. “So we're trying to be very, very careful about how we roll this thing out.” The goal is to be caught up with Homeland and “completely live” during the season, he said.

Most experimentation in interactive TV has focused on sports or game shows and “stayed away” from scripted dramas that are more “delicate property,” Preisman said. He referred to Showtime’s “marquee programming” and said the company believes it’s handling interactivity in a “delicate way” where it’s not competing with the program but adds “an additional layer” to the viewing experience. The interactive content is strategically placed to “come up between scenes” and not play during scenes with dialog, he said. The interactive options are also voiced in a way that keeps with the theme of a show. Voicing for Californication, a comedy, is “much different than what you'd get with the more serious Dexter” in tone, he said. Color schemes of the graphics are appropriate to a given show, too, he said.

Although LivePlus technology supports content that’s streamed, LG smart TVs only support content available through premium subscription channels, said Wenjen. The TVs don’t support interactivity in streaming applications such as Hulu, “but we do support any of the pay-TV services,” he said. The TV will play back the interactive content from a device connected via HDMI, Preisman said.

LG’s LivePlus platform “bridges the smart TV experience” by adding a parallel online content experience that’s delivered with Showtime programming via cable, satellite, broadcast, on demand or on disc, according to Wenjen. The interactive content is synced to an encrypted show and also works on time-shifted programming, since the interactive content is linked to audio cues, Wenjen said. That was essential to the project, since “well above half” of Showtime subscribers use time-shifting to view their favorite programs, Preisman said.

LG’s platform is based on ACR software. LG’s Wenjen didn’t name the ACR provider for LivePlus, the platform that enables programmers and content creators to deliver a synchronous interactive experience while the viewer is watching a TV show. Wenjen called LivePlus a “set of technologies built into the TV as well as delivered through the cloud.” Wenjen told us LG conducted “in-depth evaluations” of several ACR technology providers and selected a “video fingerprinting approach” that best met the company’s needs for “synchronous interactivity while allowing us to add functionality in the future for additional services.” He declined to name the partner, which is expected to make a separate technology announcement later this month, “so I don’t want to pre-empt them."

At a TV of Tomorrow conference in New York in December, Michael Collette, CEO of ACR provider Cognitive Networks, predicted 2013 would be a “breakout year” for TVs using the technology for interactive TV applications. He referred then to a “huge amount of turmoil” in the TV industry, while predicting that the U.S. installed base of ACR-enabled TVs would be 10.5 million in 2013, growing to 74 million by 2018. Responding to our question about Cognitive Networks’ role in the LG platform, Collette told us Thursday his company is “excited to see what LG and Showtime have done to enhance the viewing experience for consumers. We are looking forward to seeing the Smart TV ecosystem develop further."

NPD DisplaySearch analyst Paul Gagnon, who said at the TV of Tomorrow conference last fall that North American connected TV penetration was “going nowhere,” told us Thursday that DisplaySearch doesn’t have projections of how many TVs will contain ACR technology “or how prevalent it will become.” He wasn’t aware of any brands aside from LG that are supporting the technology, he said.

Showtime’s Preisman, who has worked on interactive TV for 15 years, said prior to now the technology has been an inhibitor to interactive TV, partly because it wasn’t fully deployed by cable operators. Making it work on a smart TV “solves all the problems of why this hasn’t been successful in the past,” he said. Some of those problems include managing how an app is transferred through a cable headend, graphics challenges associated with the number of colors that can be used and creating “transparency.” Consumers are used to “a really high level of graphics,” he said. “So if you're going to attempt to make shows interactive, it has to be at that level of quality,” he said. “For the first time … it’s possible.” That the platform is based on HTML5 “is huge,” setting the stage for the technology “to really take off,” he said. On whether Showtime will create shows designed specifically to work with the LivePlus platform, Preisman left open the possibility when there’s a “critical mass.”

On the structure of the partnerships, LG is licensing the platform to programmers and networks, Wenjen said, and there’s no charge to consumers to use the feature. Regarding monetization plans for interactive TV, Preisman cited the classic examples the industry has talked about for years, such as buying a pizza via remote control or buying the shirt an actor is wearing. While there’s a “huge opportunity” to monetize interactive TV, Showtime wants to “try to keep it classy,” Preisman said. At the outset at least, Showtime wants to keep interactive TV “really pure” and see “what works and what doesn’t,” he said. As for LG’s plans to offer interactive shopping via the platform, Wenjen said, it’s “something we're working on with some networks” but he declined to expand, saying it’s not an area he’s working on.