There was a recent article in PC Magazine that had hoteliers talking about investments they are making to  bring more high tech gadgetry to hotel guestrooms, despite the tough economy. The hoteliers, such as said Page Petry, Marriott's senior vice president of information resources, talked about wanting to give guests access to all the newest in technology, such as IPTV, iPod connectivity, the iPad, and smartphone applications to make it easy to connect in the hotel room and to go way beyond the basic wireless service.

Acentic understands this demand more than most since we are constantly talking to hoteliers about how they can get closer to their guests. With our recent launch of Panorama IP, our customers can now be running converged services like TV, HSIA and VoIP over the same network. The goal is to provide hotel chains with a holistic platform line-up suited to their chosen physical network architecture. The key element here is the potential for cross marketing so it’s important to have a consistent user experience across all hotel locations no matter which network is installed in each hotel.

Most converged service operators only end up converging on your bill with the different services run as separate entities and often managed by different departments. Convergence is much more than a unique bill. Acentic is introducing content promotion on its broadband platform with the objective to drive take up and revenue of iTV services, as well as differentiate its broadband offering. The same will apply with mobile technology moving forward. Each appliance or device should not be seen as a separate content platform but rather as part of a global content strategy driving usage of all services on all devices. The ability to extend, for example, a TV content program with additional applications on the mobile device can significantly increase the life span of a TV content program beyond the simple living room experience.

We recognize that it is also extremely important to remember that the TV is not the PC and we have to keep it simple. Past experience has proven that on-screen interactivity is successful only when the interactive content is relevant to the broadcast program being watched. Stand-alone interactivity with no correlation to the TV viewing experience just doesn’t lead to high take up rates. The implications of this are that interactivity must start from the outset of the creation of a TV program and be seen as a seamless extension. Therefore the majority of TV based Internet content will not be the Internet content we know today but new developments from the TV content world.

The TV remains a passive viewing device and as such, the interactive services and applications must remain as simple and as relevant as possible and be seen as a enhancement to the original passive experience. Program creators will have to adopt new skill sets to fully understand, develop and leverage web-based content. The use of social media may very much act as a tool to generate a following around a program, event and slowly migrate the TV experience away from the individual passive experience to a more sociable environment.

(As posted in videonet, the official IBC blog: http://v-net.tv/Blog.aspx?id=479)