never.no partners Hybrid TV for interactive solutions

Social TV specialist never.no today has partnered with virtual set and augmented reality technology provider Hybrid TV to offer integrated interactive television solutions to the broadcast industry. The two companies’ joint capabilities allow broadcasters to combine production technology with social TV and viewer participation.

Lars Lauritzen, CEO of never.no, comments: “Real-time viewer interaction is the perfect content for virtual set and augmented reality applications. By adding Hybrid TV to our growing list of integrated partners, we’re extending our Social TV capabilities to an even greater number of broadcasters.”

never.no’s Interactivity Suite (IS) integrates with Hybrid TV’s virtual set and augmented reality technology to allow an audience to participate with a programme in real-time via second-screen devices. Social media content, such as audience tweets and Facebook comments, is moderated using never.no’s Cloud-based technology. It can be harvested from the broadcaster’s Twitter account or Facebook page and ingested directly into Hybrid TV’s virtual set, where it is displayed by multiple real-time graphics formats such as virtual video screens, social tickers, automatic graphic pop-ups, 3D shapes and touch screens.

In addition, broadcasters can use never.no’s real-time polling feature to engage the audience with the broadcast content, and then enrich the programme by including viewer opinions and feedback.

Olivier Cohen, CEO of Hybrid TV, comments: “I believe the future of television is for people to interact directly with the content. Up to now, social media messages have not really enriched the content from an audiovisual perspective. We want to make viewers’ social media messages a key component of the production content.”