Tuesday, September 24 9:00 AM - 10:15 AM Session C: Interactive TV/DTV Middleware Solutions There are two sides to the set-top box, Internet, interactive TV and DTV introduction, one is to have the hardware in place, the other is to have ready the programming or "middleware" solutions that make it useful and dynamic for the TV viewer. Whether it is called DTV, ETV, TVs with Interactive Programming, multi-plexed TV viewing, or Customized or Personalized TV, there are a group of companies who have set the stage for this next TV generation, and we are pleased to have them represented at this session. Donald P. Dulchinos, Vice President, Advanced Platforms and Services, CableLabs® Bill Sheppard, Business Development Manager, Sun Microsystems M3 Sweatt, Director, Business Development, North America, Microsoft TV Vincent Dureau, Chief Technical Office, OpenTV Herve Utheza, VP Product and Solution Marketing, Liberate Technologies Dr Ken Morse, Vice President, Chief Technical Officer, PowerTV, Inc. Bill Niemeyer, founder, Centrimedia, Moderator Bill Sheppard is Group Business Development Manager for Digital Television within Sun Microsystems' software organization. Upon joining Sun in 1997 he initiated Sun's DTV efforts and has been centrally involved with the strategic direction and deployment of Java technology within the television industry. Mr. Sheppard works with leading service operators, device manufacturers, content providers, and standards bodies worldwide to drive the architecture, development, and deployment of advanced, open-standards based DTV applications and services. Prior to joining Sun Mr. Sheppard worked at IBM followed by eight years as regional sales manager with a leading embedded operating system vendor. Mr. Sheppard holds a B.S. in Computer Engineering from Iowa State University. Donald P. Dulchinos, Vice President, Advanced Platforms and Services, CableLabs®: Donald P. Dulchinos is Vice President, Advanced Platforms and Services, for Cable Television Laboratories, Inc. (CableLabs®). Mr. Dulchinos directs and manages the OpenCable project, an initiative of the cable television industry being managed through CableLabs with a goal of attaining advanced, interactive digital set-top boxes manufactured by multiple vendors and which support the range of current and future digital cable product offerings. Mr. Dulchinos oversees the development of the OpenCable hardware specification in cooperation with cable companies and consumer electronics manufacturers, and also coordinates input from the Hollywood production community, the Federal Communications Commission, and national retailers such as Circuit City. He manages an effort to define a software environment for retail set-top and other OpenCable devices, with the goal of supporting a range of interactive television applications and services. He also oversees the creation of an interoperability testing lab for OpenCable and the launch of interoperability testing by a variety of technology companies of television receivers, set-top boxes, personal computers and other products. Mr. Dulchinos is responsible for coordinating the OpenCable™ business and technical advisory teams in their deliberations aimed at designing an industry specification for next generation digital set-top boxes. He manages communications of OpenCable™ goals and objectives to the cable industry vendor community and recruits key technology companies to the effort. He is also leading investigation into the potential for new set-top distribution strategies, working with consumer electronics and retail distribution companies. Mr. Dulchinos manages the Advanced Platforms and Services Department within CableLabs, with a full time staff of seventeen full time technical, business development and software professionals. He also coordinates the involvement in CableLabs development and testing efforts of technology and marketing personnel from over a dozen major consumer electronics companies, a half dozen software companies, and supports a vendor interest group comprising more than 500 companies. Before joining CableLabs®, Mr. Dulchinos spent seven years as director of research with the National Cable Television Association, where he specialized in technology assessment and strategic analysis of other telecommunications and information industries. Prior to that, he was an analyst at National Economic Research Associates in Washington D.C., and before that he was a technical information specialist in the Congressional Research Service at the Library of Congress. Mr. Dulchinos holds a master’s degree in public administration from the Graduate School of Business and Public Management at the University of Denver, and a B.A. in economics from Union College in Schenectady, NY. M3 Sweatt is director, business development, North America, for the Microsoft TV Group at Microsoft Corporation. He is responsible for developing and strengthening the platform group’s relationships with leading network operators in the United States and Canada. Sweatt joined Microsoft in February 2001, bringing more than 10 years' experience working for companies specializing in cutting-edge entertainment and TV technologies. Most recently, Sweatt led the business development team at ReplayTV, where he was responsible for worldwide alliances and partnerships. Before joining ReplayTV in 2000, Sweatt held a number of high-profile positions at media and TV technology companies, including Pinnacle Systems Inc., where he was director of the desktop products group. Before that, Sweatt held senior management positions at AutoDesk Inc., The 3DO Co. and Digidesign, a division of Avid Technology Inc. Vincent Dureau, Chief Technical Officer Vincent Dureau is responsible for developing technologies and business relationships that will bring integrated, cost-effective solutions to equipment vendors, network operations and content and service providers. He has been with OpenTV since the company's inception and has been responsible for developing a world-class engineering organization. With more than 17 years of technical expertise, Dureau launched his engineering career in 1984 with Thomson's research department in Paris, France. He later joined Thomson's research lab in Los Angeles. For the past eight years, he has led technical developments in the field of multimedia, consumer user interfaces, video compression and interactive television. Dureau holds an engineering degree in economics from the Institute National Agronomique and master's degrees from Universite Paris VII in applied mathematics and Ecole Nationale Superieure des Telecommunications in computer science. Bill Niemeyer is the founder of Centrimedia (http://www.centrimedia.com/), an information and analysis resource for the new TV technologies including ITV, ETV, VOD and PVR. Centrimedia's mission is to provide ITV / ETV market participants with high-value information, analysis and insights to assist them in making critical tactical and strategic decisions in this fast-changing market. The emphasis is how business models will evolve and emerge to respond to the new technology and content potentials. It provides this via the Niemeyer Review free weekly email newsletter and other services. Bill was formerly Director of Strategic Development for Spiderdance, a leading provider of infrastructure and technology to broadcast and cable networks for creating, running and managing interactive TV programming. Spiderdance developed and deployed five groundbreaking and award winning ITV series for TV networks during Bill's time there including "Weakest Link" for NBC and "webRIOT" for MTV. Bill has been in the interactive industry since 1991, working in areas including corporate web and multimedia development, CD-ROM games and 3D virtual world technologies. His clients have included Apple, Sears, NTT, IBM, HP, Mondo Media and blaxxun. Bill is a member of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences and a member of the ATAS Editorial Committee, which is responsible for oversight of the academy web site and Emmy magazine. Dr Ken Morse, Vice President, Chief Technical Officer, PowerTV: Ken has more than 20 years of software development experience during which time he has co-founded four companies. Ken is a founder and CTO of PowerTV, Inc. At PowerTV, Ken and his team, along with their set-top partners, brought the first IP-based digital interactive television system to the mass market, providing the software platform and services for over 10 million digital interactive set-tops in North America today. In his current role Ken is responsible for the technical and product direction of the company. Prior to PowerTV, Ken was a member of the team that developed the first Hardware Reference Platform for Multi-media consumer electronics devices at Kaleida Labs, an Apple-IBM joint venture. Ken was also a founder of Ultra Digital Systems and MTL where he developed DSP Development systems and video compression schemes for PC multi-media applications. Ken's first foray into business was in 1981 when he received a Commodore Vic-20 and founded a company offering fast loaders and encryption schemes to the software duplicating industry. Ken attended the University of Liverpool and holds a Ph.D in Electronic Engineering and a B.Eng in Electronic Engineering. He is a member of IEEE, ACM and SCTE.