BBC and Envivio create Interactive MPEG-4 news programming

BBC News Interactive and Envivio announced a plan to trial interactive MPEG-4 technology. BBC News Interactive has developed a trial service which will stream interactive MPEG-4 content to customers who would then be able to view the streams using Windows Media, RealNetworks or QuickTime players using an appropriate plug-in.

The trial service will consist of special edition interactive content created by the editors of the BBC's Newsnight program using the Envivio Broadcast Studio, a professional authoring and compositing tool for interactive content. Content will be streamed using the Envivio Streaming Server, a powerful MPEG-4 server built to stream live and stored interactive content.

The BBC’s Russell Merryman and Cliff Wooton presented a paper entitled "Interactive Television News Services - The beginning of a revolution" on April 7th, during the Digital Storage and Asset Management for Broadcast Content session.

BBC News Interactive is responsible for the BBC News Web site. It launched a 24x7 interactive television news service on digital satellite in November 2001, and regularly provides iTV enhancements for a number of its programs on all digital platforms used by the BBC.

For more information visit www.envivio.com and http://news.bbc.co.uk/.

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