Irish-based high-tech content production company DV4 is to launch a TV Internet site, it announced on Wednesday. As reported in this week’s ElectricNews (www.enn.ie)
The site, www.dv4.ie, has been developed specifically for viewing through a digital set-top box, and is compatible with Liberate, the middle-ware system used by NTL. The site itself details the work of the company and gives information on other projects done by the company in various areas, including Web-casting, the production of WAP sites and the creation of an Irish DVD title.
"Ordinary Web sites do not always work on digital TV, the text can appear too small and it can often be impossible to navigate with a remote control, which is why we went to the bother of designing our site specifically for digital TV," Liam Ward, managing director of DV4 told ElectricNews.Net.
The company is currently working with TG4 in developing interactive programmes. Ward believes that Irish channels need to move towards producing more interactive programming, in order to enable advertisers to be more inventive. He added that this has worked successfully in other countries, including France.
The digital television industry in Ireland currently faces a number of drawbacks, in particular, there will be three digital channels (NTL, Chorus and an impending digital terrestrial channel) operating in an inherently small market. In addition to this not all digital channels use the same encoding system.
"The market is fragmented in Ireland, which makes it harder because there are only 1.1 million homes in the country, but we are also developing a site for that will be compatible with the Chorus system," Ward said.
DV4 was established in 1998 and currently employs six people at its base in Temple Bar, Dublin. The company is entirely privately funded.
- Mary O'Neill
