Streaming Platform is a sophisticated website designed to provide online digital media services through a web-interface.

Streaming Platform will provide a customer with the ability to;

• Convert live or pre-recorded media files into a multitude of formats in real-time
• Distribute media files via a URL interface to any broadband connected end-point
• Store and search media
• Accelerate and enhance the distribution of high quality media over existing (and emerging) networks
• Track and govern distribution rights for media
• Implement digital rights on media
• Sign-up and manage an account online
• Automate the media management processes with an XML formatted file
• Interact with the external internet programs such as the Media Guide Networks channel platform and advertising sales systems

Media Guide Networks  www.mediaguidenetworks.com www.mediaguidenetworks.net

Media Guide Networks (MGN) is a sophisticated internet application framework designed for end-to-end management of interactive TV over broadband networks.

The Company foresees the future of broadcast networks and TV connected devices providing an interactive end-user experience.   This experience will be powered by hardware that supports media storage, broadcast reception and broadband delivered content.  Such devices will provide interactive menu systems within each channel, supporting an unlimited number of potential content asserts for use by consumers on a participation and broadcast basis. The MGN platform is designed to supply the features and benefits required to make this happen.

In existing digital broadcast networks, end-user devices have an interactive guide which helps a user change from one channel to another: This is called an Electronic Program Guide or EPG.   Through the introduction of interactive channelling each channel will require an additional interactive menu system. This will enable users to navigate and interact with the library of content each channel provider will provide on an advertising-sponsored basis over the broadband network, sometimes interacting with the broadcast.

Through investigations earlier in the year, the name of this type of interface was suggested to be a “media guide” in Europe, the leader of technology development in this area.  The Company purchased the domain, Media Guide Networks, to brand a service whereby a delivery system for media guides and related media assets, would be sold and marketed to international vendors and media companies.

The technology development project will incorporate a range of globally ratified existing standards such as TV-Anytime (Content Referencing), Globally Executable Multimedia Home Platform (GEM-MHP) (interactive content), DVB-SI / DVB-IPTV (possible signalling and content delivery specifications), VC-1 and H.264 or Mpeg 4 / AVC (media formats), XML (mark-up language), and a range of other associated standards.

There are a number of levels throughout the fulfilment process (from production to end-user) that this project (and The Company) will need to take into account.

1. 1. Media format

Existing interactive TV, Blu-Ray and HD-DVD platforms provide a consistent approach to interactive television design, application and software development. The MGN network will continue to develop upon the existing foundations archived by these formats and hopes to provide an automated encoding procedure from Blu-Ray or HD-DVD to MGN / SP enabled systems.

1. 2. Interactivity between disk or broadcast and broadband delivered video

Existing digital broadcasting standards support data insertion into broadcast feeds.  This function can be used to send links that signal consumer devices to get broadband data, from broadcast driven events.

1. 3. Channel Management

The channel management platform is the perceived brains of the operation, providing producers the systems and tools necessary to publish and meter channel content usage.  The channel system also enables distributors to manage usage, distribution territories, advertising information, design differentiation and interactivity with the end-user devices.

1. 4. End-User Devices

The software platform is designed for implementation on Hybrid Personal Digital Recording Devices.  These devices have started to emerge in the market.  In the near-term, interfaces for existing devices and gaming consoles (ie: media centre + Xbox 360) can be produced cheaply and easily, and are likely to accelerate adoption and growth of Set-Top Usage MGN usage.

Existing High Definition DVD players (both HD-DVD and BluRay) incorporate network content access.  These interfaces will be used as a sales interface that the business will seek to capitalise on.  Disk driven usage offers the business a low-tech way for a user to interact with broadband delivered media.  For disk providers, it is possible to provide new business models to disk distribution by providing updated and expanded media for HD-DVD / Blu-Ray content titles; potentially also securing premium content on the disks, by providing the usage rules over broadband.

The method and system for this integration, is believed to be innovative, unique, and therefore protectable, via IP laws and processes.

In summary, MGN is designed to be a standards package for providing interactive TV content to customers. The platform provides interactive media to a range of devices and interfaces including mobile phones, interactive digital radio devices and web-browsers.  MGN is an integrated platform solution designed to deliver an interactive content solution to channel operators.

1. Interactive television will evolve to become part of the new standards for the broadcasting industry.
   1. The broadcast media industry requires these new standards to compete and participate in the new landscape of digital communications technologies.
   2. Content providers cannot produce interactive content, until standards exist that provide the assuredly that any-such produced content can be used in multiple environments / territories.
   3. Collaboration is required on an international level, in order to obtain the critical mass requirements for the production of associated products and services, as required for the introduction and operation of non IPTV based, interactive television services.
   4. Broadcast and other video media markets have been detrimentally affected by the introduction of fast broadband connectivity and the use of this utility for viewing broadcast media, without a business system that supplies revenue back to the content producers. Content Delivered via Internet often originates from a single viewer somewhere in the world, rather than a legitimate license holder, providing revenue to the supply chain.
   5. Advertising dollars have broader market options, such as paying per user, to anywhere in the world and/or to local communities via specific WWW estates.  Broadcasters need a method to capture some of this market, in order to maintain a current standing, in an internet connected market.
   6. There are many differences between the World Wide Web (www) and Internet Protocol.  Interactive television will be best leveraged with the benefits Internet Protocol offers differentiating its “business systems” to protect related communities and viewership audiences, through localisation, privacy protection, and the development of existing business systems, operated by existing broadcasters…
      1. The www is an application of internet, providing freedom of speech, with very few restrictions.
      2. Broadcasting operates upon geographical territories as a licensed service, governed by local bodies to protect a range of sociological requirements and their effects on the local communities such systems serve.
      3. WWW, without broadcast mechanisms is unlikely to support local community development in a way evolutionary to existing broadcast systems.
      4. WWW only content distribution risks a critical business systems failure of the broadcasting industry, through its inability to compete in advertising markets.  This would be economically disruptive, propagated through multiple levels of social media, and small to medium business sectors.
      5. The iTV Company is able to produce a platform that could be used as an interactive TV standard. The project will be funded through advertising and become successful through ease of use and the demonstration of the solution to local markets.

The business plan was developed to source funding for the development, and establishment of an open-standard, operational platform for DVB and IP Delivered Content, to TV.  These proposed systems incorporated all such aspects end-to-end, including content production, content storage, content security, content distribution and content display.   The principle area of work surrounded advertising supported content.

This proposal cuts across a group of industry sectors, however, the profit drivers were based upon advertising, media and telecommunications.

For years, industry leaders have been discussing “convergence” and its effects on a range of industry segments as internet protocol becomes the leading format for information communications networks, and compounds in the number of formats or types of information made compatible and transferred across such networks.

This has lead to a boom in telecommunications revenue opportunities and core business associations to the rest of the community. It has also provided new opportunities for growth and has developed to provide a leadership role in the growth of new economies, and related intellectual property capitalisation.

A problem incurred through such ubiquitous compatibility, is a degradation of the organically positioned stepping stones, incurred by operations that did not involve telecommunications as a foundation for business growth.  Telecommunications have broadened their cross-section of economical effect, to an extent whereby almost no business can operate without payment to telecommunications businesses.  This has incurred a dramatic change in parity and IP capitalisation drivers, harboured by companies that traditionally monetised other formats, that are now “compatible with internet”, for distribution purposes…

The telecommunications industry has not successfully developed security measures to protect business from risks associated to the operation of their core business.  Whereas in pre-internet markets parties were required to obtain physical copies of materials prior to replication, internet does not require such precursors.  In fact, one physical copy can be “enabled” onto the global telecommunication network for replication.  The only party, who will, in all cases, make direct revenues from this process, is the telecommunications industry.

Beneficially, this platform enables global, free speech and low-cost distribution of ideas, concepts and other intellectual property. The iTV Company aims to purport a specification for this platform, calling it HTTP internet, whilst segregating and opening opportunities for other market segments to utilise the same infrastructure to support their key business drivers in an economical manner.

This, in media terms, is Intellectual Property (“IP”).  Although the acronym is used in a similar format to Internet Protocol (“IP”), the terms actuate very different things in terms of economics.

In internet terms; Intellectual Property values the information, made possible through interpretive publication of data.

Whether it be media, financial, medical, social, corporate, government other personal information there are intellectual property associations to such “data”, that are and should be valued at a different rate to the cost of transacting the data asset.

This has not been implemented in the foundation for the internet networks.  In fact, internet networks, and the telecommunications companies who operate such networks, take very little responsibility for any data that is transferred over their commercial services, the appropriation of such data in information format to recipients and/or the commercial model in which the data was transacted on an information level.

Televisions sit in our lounge rooms and are family orientated devices.   They have been developed and continually used as a format of social communications, governed by local social decisions of content suitability and access-form.  It is seemingly important to attempt to adapt the new technology, around the social principles that have been established through precedent.

The key sectors include broadcast, telecommunications, media, media production and advertising.  Secondary markets are predominately the small to medium enterprise which, as a market, provide both the funds to support distribution and the funds to support advertorial uptake.

• Telecommunications companies are commercialising content assets in a variety of formats.
• Broadcasters are developing internet strategies, differentiating internet from their broadcast markets, and delivering a disparate and disconnected approach to the sale of content assets, over “multiple” networks.
• Free to air broadcasters (both radio and television) are losing “eyeballs” to a range of factors, including pay TV networks, and broadband internet users who are increasingly able to download new-release programming from international sources.

The SME market is being affected through their ability to advertise their goods and services, to their local markets as internet marketing continues to elude them, and broadcasting becomes less effective.  Print based, mail-drop campaigns continue to work, but do not offer similar proportional effectiveness that video advertising offers.

Furthermore, through the invention and effective commercialisation of the products and services described in this business plan, existing business is offered a new format of advertising never before made available, within the commercial pricing framework, offered by The iTV Company.

Industry Groups

Industry groups who support the commercialisation of Interactive TV include:

• Media Companies
  • Advertising producers and buyers
  • Publishers
  • Content owners, aggregators and producers
  • Broadcasters
  • Technology and Communications Infrastructure Companies
    • Telecommunication and internet service providers
    • Consumer electronics manufacturers
    • Software vendors and internet portal businesses
    • Governments

The most influential group is the advertising sector, backed by the government departments responsible for small to medium business growth and prosperity.  With advertising dollars, content can be distributed free of end-user charges. With IPTV, small advertising budgets can provide interactive advertisements and sales support interfaces (such as leads generation and enquiry systems) to local and niche markets.

• Media companies generally require advertising dollars at some stage along the supply-distribution chain, in order to obtain a profit from the sale of their products and services.
• Technology companies require content, to distribute and enhance distribution
• Government ensures the parties play “fairly” and in the interests of the larger population.

The iTV Company tried to combines these industry groups, by working to provide a standard platform, for (local) advertising-sponsored content to be distributed, in a framework that adheres to and is administered by a governance framework, in part implemented by the government.

The iTV Company does not have a core business interest in competing on a content brand level, by rather a methodology for content supply to end-users and the framework that enables such business systems in an economical and socially sustainable basis.

Market Size

The free to air broadcasting market in Australia operates in excess of 1 billion turnover per annum.

The internet advertising bureau in an article published on the 4th of October, states that during the first six months of 2007, internet advertising revenues (US) were nearly 10 billion dollars (USD) representing nearly a 27% increase over the first half of 2006. (Source: http://www.iab.net/about_the_iab/recent_press_releases/press_release_archive/press_release/5230 )

The potential market size of digital interactive video advertising is massive.

The financial assumptions provided in association to this business plan, are aimed at acquiring a very small percentage of the total transaction value for each content delivery, then backed by a very small percentage of the potential market for interactive television and the platforms that make the market.

The iTV Company’s technologies enable it to operate with a relatively small industrial footprint in the global market.  As the technology platforms evolve, the supply and services systems can be exported, with relatively little local management infrastructure, in each commercial market.

Target Market/s

The business will focus on small to medium businesses for the production of advertising.  This advertising will be used to sponsor content, which will be distributed over The Company’s technology platform.

As The Company evolves, it will sell channels to companies who seek to produce and manage interactive TV channels, using the companies technologies platforms, as well as production solutions to enable businesses to contribute to the channels, operated by The Company, and its’ customers.

The technology capabilities provide a cost effective platform for video media distribution.  Whether it is a channel provider who wants to use the “tools” to do it themselves, without worrying about the technology or a local community organisation who would like to broadcast their annual fund raising event to give it more opportunity to raise funds for their endeavour.

The technology platform is designed to facilitate the needs of current and potential content developers.