Deutsche Telekom launched the Interactive TV Award 2009. This will be the second year Deutsche Telekom has invited external developers to present their ideas and concepts for new functions for Entertain, Deutsche Telekom's IPTV service. For the first time, creative individuals as well as professional teams of developers will be invited to share their visions. In particular, participants with limited capacity should be given the opportunity in a cut-down competition to demonstrate their innovative ideas. Deutsche Telekom will be rewarding the best professional suggestions with total prize money worth EUR 110,000.
Christian P. Illek, member of the Board of Management T-Home, Marketing: "We are delighted to give developers from throughout Germany the opportunity to present to us their visions for an interactive television experience using Entertain. All those taking part should have no limits placed on them as far as creativity goes."
Professional developers that can already technically implement their innovative ideas participate in the award's first category. Here, all the concepts will be put to the test in the new Microsoft Presentation Framework (MPF) development environment. This application provides participants with a great deal of leeway in how they design and implement their innovative visions.
Creative individuals with ideas, but with no concepts or means of technically implementing their ideas, can enter the 'Freestyle' award. Every concept for interactive television really does count in this category.
These ideas do not yet need to be technically feasible. Rather, their purpose is to create sustainable trends and promote developments in the area of TV entertainment.
Furthermore, creative television viewers can present their visions on what the improved television of the future will look like. The public will evaluate all the entries, and the winners of the 'Viewers' award will receive non-cash prizes such as Entertain packages and Microsoft Xbox 360 games consoles.
Deutsche Telekom's IPTV service already offers numerous interactive functions at the push of a button. Entertain customers can access the online video store and the extensive TV archive at any time. Entertain also allows viewers to stop the program they are watching at any time, record a program on the built-in hard disk or program the set-top box to record a program later on.
Further information on the Interactive TV Award 2009 can be found at www.interactive-tv-award.de. All the participants and interested parties will also be networked via community services such as Facebook, Xing and Twitter.
Entertain - Deutsche Telekom’s IPTV service With approximately 150 TV channels, 10,000 titles in an online video store and TV archive, around 2,500 national and international radio stations, as well as interactive applications, Entertain is the undisputed leader of the German IPTV market – a fact that is also substantiated by eight test wins for the product in the last six months. Around 20 million households can receive Entertain via a high-speed DSL line. Entertain is available from EUR 44.95 – including TV, telephone flat rate and high-speed DSL flat rate. About Deutsche Telekom AG Deutsche Telekom is one of the world’s leading integrated telecommunications companies with more than 148 million mobile phone customers, around 40 million fixed-network lines and nearly 17 million broadband lines (as at March 31, 2009). With the brands T-Home (fixed-network telephony, broadband internet), T-Mobile (mobile communications), and T-Systems (ICT solutions), Deutsche Telekom positions itself as an international provider of connected life and work services. The Group is represented in around 50 countries and has approximately 261,000 employees worldwide (as at March 31, 2009). In 2008, Deutsche Telekom generated revenue of EUR 61.6 billion.