The Bell Labs research and development arm of Lucent Technologies Inc is patenting a new algorithm to provide cheaper information insertion in television pictures. Bell Labs demonstrated the new MediaLink publicly for the first time at the Western Cable Show in Anaheim, California this month. Codenamed MediaLink, it’s different from using the vertical blanking interval to add information to television pictures because the information is part of the transmission and cannot be stripped out by the cable provider. In addition, MediaLink means the cable provider does not require additional hardware to transmit the content with the signal, unlike with VBI Vertical Blanking Interval inserts. MediaLink embeds information, such as product promotion or medical alerts in the actual video image, without degradation, the company said, and can be carried downstream in multiple passes. It can be retained by viewers after being recorded on video cassette too. The new system can encapsulate information in a video content signal and send it to a $50 smart receiver that subscribers have in their homes. MediaLink content providers will have to spend around $1,000 for an encoder to tie in their data to the signal. The back channel for the consumer will be via ordinary phone line linked to the television. The model that MediaLink creates extends to many situations, including public service announcements for niche audiences, or enhanced services for patients, such as reminders about medication or treatments, said Kit August, Bell Labs’ business development manager. The two initial industry targets are the watermark industry since the additional data cannot be stripped out and the entertainment service provider industry. For now, the inserts are text-based only. The firm plans to offer graphic inserts sometime in the future but would not say when. The system goes into beta test in a couple of months’ time, with availability sometime within the fourth quarter.
