CoTV: Coactive TV+Web Use, in Context

Growing masses of viewers surf the Web while watching TV. So far, the only connector between what they see on the Web and what they watch on TV is their brain and their fingers. I have been working on coactive media, particularly CoTV, as a way to link these two media in a far more powerful way.

Coactive TV (CoTV) software automatically harnesses the context of whatever a viewer is watching on TV to push related Web links and content to their PC screen. That provides a power-assist to TV-Web multitasking that directly links use of TV and the Web, to enhance both content and advertising.

CoTV enables a wide variety of applications. These include

• Co-viewing: program-related information of all kinds (commentary, news reports, sports statistics, movie casts, etc.), including ad-related interaction and shopping (which like search ads, can actually be useful to the user).
• Pre-viewing: richly intelligent and interactive program guides, VOD/IPTV catalogs, and DVR scheduler services that help users navigate their exploding world of media content.

This creates a variety of new revenue streams -- and one of the most significant is online contextual advertising driven by TV ads. CoTV is adaptable to a wide variety of deployed and emerging platforms -- wireless PC laptops, PDAs, phones, set-top-boxes, media gateways, DVRs, DVDs, WiFi, and more.

More background is at www.teleshuttle.com/cotv/