BT Vision to add sports, games, ad apps

Published Friday, May 30 2008, 14:43 BST | By Dave West

BT Vision is planning to introduce new interactive applications including sports, gaming and lifestyle services.

They are being developed with interactive developer Emuse, which launched interactive magazine channel OnVision on the hybrid DTT-DSL service in December.

"The BT Vision Sports service will enhance BT Vision's existing sports content and provide video-rich news, stats and highlights services across a range of sports while offering armchair sports fans an ever-changing selection of premium VOD sporting content," the company said.

"AdZone, a showcase for compelling and innovative advertising and sponsorship showing the capabilities of the BT Vision platform, will be available to viewers 24/7. The lifestyle magazine will feature in depth analysis of a wide-range of topics for BT Vision viewers to initially be focused on motoring and parenting."

Improvements are also being planned for the OnVision service. All the applications are expected to be developed over 12 months.

The applications are being built for the Tasman browser, currently employed for OnVision, but will be transferred to the Microsoft Presentation Framework upon its planned deployment by BT Vision.

Emuse will host and manage the applications and their audio and video content.

"It is always interesting to be working with top-tier companies such as BT Vision,' said Emuse chief executive Patrick Rainsford. "In this instance it is all the more interesting as we are developing applications that will be very video rich, and advertising supported thereby seeing our two companies again create and deploy world-leading commercial IPTV applications."