One particular challenge in ORF‘s digital service offerings was the development - and especially the ongoing production – of the supplementary TV-JETZT (TV NOW) portal. Unlike INFOTEXT, TV-JETZT is exclusively dedicated to offering detailed information on the show currently on the air. The portal therefore differs substantially from a program guide, which is meant to offer relatively general schedule information on many shows over a longer period of time. While INFOTEXT and the program guide are largely independent of the show on the air, the TV-JETZT portal is used directly in connection with the current show. In the production of this special data service, therefore, the main priority is to offer additional information specific to each television show‘s content. For this purpose, the content had to be fine-tuned regularly in cooperation with the relevant television editorial staff at ORF.
Coordination with MHP application scheduling also had to be far more precise for the fast-changing TV-JETZT content than in the case of independent portal content. At the end of one show, the information in TV-JETZT had to be changed as quickly as possible for the next program, which usually began immediately. This was only possible in the !TV4GRAZ project thanks to extremely careful coordination between the ITV editorial staff, the Content Entry System, application development, set-top box software and the digital playout. In light of the considerable level of complexity in these interactions, the development of the TV-JETZT portal – and especially the establishment of a stable editorial workflow – can be considered one of the most outstanding achievements in the pilot project.
