Until now television and Teletext were two separated media having little relationship with each other. TV-Windows changes this. It synchronises Teletext with the current broadcast and is able to superimpose text windows on the television program.
Opening a text window allows viewers to systematically freeze television commercials or programs. Background information, which is displayed in a split-screen mode, is added. Viewers have full control, they can read the selected information for as long as they want and can even later reselect it. Meanwhile the viewers are still watching the ongoing television broadcast.
Since adding Teletext split-screen information is voluntary, there are less legal implications compared to video based split-screen advertising. Although voluntary, it is easy to stimulate it to grow into a viewing habit because the background information is permanently available and four times faster to access than classical Teletext.
TV-Windows commercial revenues are gained from two sources. The first is increased viewing rates. Viewers can zap within the channel instead of between channels. The second is direct revenues, currently derived from three applications: TV2Sponsor, TV2Box and TV2Interaction.
TV2Sponsor generates income by sponsorship of program related information windows. TV2Box generates income from television commercials by prolonging them in an advertising window. Finally TV2Interaction generates income by premium rated SMS or telephone traffic. It offers, based on TV-Windows, a complete interactive television platform with quiz, voting and betting facilities for ordinary television sets without the need for any special decoders.
