Digital Media Outlook 2006:
"Is it all about football?"

TV scores and football-related applications attract high attention

Munich, 29/06/2005 On the 27th of June, media experts met in the European Patent Office in Munich to discuss the future of the Digital Media Market in 2006.
About 25 specialists examined the role of football next year referring to tremendous amounts of cash already invested in football rights and innovative technologies and applications designed to match the needs of an exited audience worldwide expecting to see the new World Champion.

Panelists from Korea, Japan, Australia, UK and all over Europe talked about promising topics of ITV and mobile solutions.

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After a sound presentation by Andrew Hunt from Mega Vision (Japan) introducing a new way of experiencing football putting three High Definition pictures alongside so that the viewer can watch the result on a display up to 15 by 50 meters Experiences on HDTV broadcasting were shared by experts from the EBU (European Broadcasting Union), ASTRA Deutschland and ETRI (Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute, Korea). Hans Hoffmann – Senior Engineer at EBU - highlighted some major problems of HDTV currently hampering market penetration. He expects this new technology to serve a mass market by 2010, asking EU politicians to foster its development by enabling more research and standardization as well as encouraging the public broadcasters to produce HDTV-content.

In the afternoon conflicting views on mobile applications and mobile content delivery lead to an exciting discussion between Gunnar Garfors (NRK, Norway) and Kari Aalto ( INCCOM, Finland). Against the rich and promising experiences of NRK in the mobile TV area, Kari took a firm stand: If the football would have a diameter of 2 meters, the football WC in 2006 would probably be a great opportunity to get TV on mobile phones and to kick off a mass market. But the ball has an outline of just 68 centimeters. So don't put football on Mobiles!

Innovative companies like moreTV advocated the added value of digital video recorder solutions (PVRs) offering a new platform for advertisers and broadcasters or platform operators. Supported by the appropriate back-end technology of NDS, sponsoring the “Digital Media Outlook 2006”, PVRs introduce the next generation of television.

In the later afternoon the audience was informed on new applications and services in interactive TV ready to enter the market at the end of this year. Christian Morawietz (BettyTV, Germany) presented an interactive football quiz, inviting the audience to take part via 25 Betty remote controls. inLive introduced an interactive football-quizshow asking the audience to use the mobile phones as voting tool bringing interactive TV experiences in real time to the conference showroom. Other applications like the format developed for the Eurovision Song Contest by Beckoffice - the Mobile Content Award winner in Cannes - could easily be adapted to the world of football.

Last, but not least, panel discussions focused on new trends in marketing also referring to the challenge on football rights and the key drivers of making Avaya to become an official World Cup sponsors.

Organized by iTV/Convergence consulting company thebrainbehind [tbb\*], the B2B-congress came to the conclusion that football in deed is driving businesses and therefore is and will be the key to successful business models within the next year. Nevertheless the market participants are recommended to carefully scan the competitive environment corresponding to their individual needs and resources if they want to take part in the big game.

All Information on the Digital Media Outlook 2006: