INTERTAINER INC. of Santa Monica, CA is rolling out a service that will deliver on-demand TV shows, movies, shopping opportunities and more to personal computers or televisions equipped with WebTV set-top boxes.
The service launched in August in Willow Grove, PA, outside Philadelphia, and will bow this month in Denver. Intertainer hopes to be in 10 major markets by next year.
The company is pitching itself as the actualization of the much-touted convergence of computer and television. To sign up, consumers need a broadband hookup, meaning a cable modem (with service supplied by Comcast Corp. in Willow Grove) or an asymmetric digital subscriber line that can handle the high-bandwidth video. U S West Communications’ ADSL is being used in Denver.
Consumers pay only for products they buy or download (a first-run movie, for example, costs $3.95). The service has a “smart agent” that learns viewers’ preferences and helps to make recommendations.
Intertainer’s service has an attractive interface: an outer wheel with categories (movies, music, concerts, shopping) and an inner wheel for genres. The company has content agreements with NBC, Time Warner, Sony, Buena Vista (Disney) and barnesandnoble.com. NBC, Sony, Intel Corp., Comcast and U S West have invested in the company.
The shopping channel will include apparel, hardware, consumer electronics, travel and other areas. Intertainer vice president of commerce and advertising Terrence Coles says even a traditionally static endeavor like bookselling could be enlivened with video of authors talking. Users will be able to preview films, TV shows, even software.
As for direct marketing opportunities, Intertainer promises to target ads to individuals based on their profiles. And these won’t be your typical TV ads. Using “hypervideo” technology from Veon Inc., San Francisco, users will be able to click on products in the video ads so they can buy them.
“We want it to be more than just movies on demand,” says Coles. “The biggest challenge for direct marketers is to produce the interactive video ads.”
Coles says that, although the service’s travel area has infomercials about cruises, Intertainer doesn’t plan to offer the DRTV vehicle extensively.
Intertainer beta tested the service in Northern California using Pacific Bell’s FasTrak ADSL and in Buena Park, CA with Comcast’s cable modem system.
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