Broadband Interactive Applications (BIAP) has signed a five year license agreement with Time Warner (News - Alert) Cable for the use of its ETV User Agent in Time Warner Cable's advanced advertising platform, according to the company.

 

In addition to supporting third-party EBIF applications, the Biap ETV User Agent will support Time Warner Cable's newest MDN navigator. BIAP supplies the cable industry with tools for interactive television advertising and programming. These tools include the ETV Platform, an offering of applications and a portfolio of products for advanced advertising.

 

"The BIAP ETV User Agent is a robust application platform that will serve Time Warner Cable well in the deployment of EBIF and properly support our interactive applications and advanced advertising," said Mike Hayashi, executive vice president, advanced engineering for Time Warner Cable.

 

According to the company officials, when Biap’s software is fully deployed, Time Warner Cable’s digital set-top boxes will be able to run Enhanced TV Binary Interchange Format (EBIF) applications whether with the apps created by the operator or by third parties, such as TV networks.

 

EBIF (Enhanced TV Binary Interchange Format) is a multimedia content format standard developed under the OpenCable project of CableLabs (News - Alert). The primary purpose of ETV and the EBIF standard is to enable interactivity to drive viewer engagement and participation.

 

BIAP's EBIF Studio is part of the solutions offered by the company to the various entities in the ETV ecosystem. The studio is an easy-to-use authoring environment that supports the rapid creation of new ETV applications. The BIAP EBIF Studio allows operators, programmers, and third-party developers to respond more effectively to market opportunities and requests. The User Agent will be available to cable operators that may not have a deployable in-house solution.

 

BIAP also sees the agreement with Time Warner Cable as a validation of their EBIF solutions. They claim that their solutions have the potential to bring out advanced advertising techniques which depend on the deployment of EBIF-enabled set-top boxes. Users will also get more participation opportunities through interactive applications.