MUMBAI: SCP Private Equity Partners, a private equity firm that invests in companies in high growth industries, announced that its portfolio company, BIAP Systems, Inc., has brought interactivity to television through partnerships with Time Warner Cable and eBay.
Through the use of BIAP's "intelligent agent software technology," cable subscribers in the US will now have the ability to access eBay directly from their home TVs.
BIAP's "eBay on TV" allows registered eBay users to check the status of their accounts and submit bids using their existing set-top boxes and remotes. Alerts will be posted on subscribers' screens if they have been outbid or have won an auction - all in real time and from any channel. The service comes at no additional cost to cable subscribers and is accessible through a simple on-screen sign in process.
eBay on TV has been pilot tested by Time Warner in Austin, Texas with great success and is now rolling it out to all digital cable subscribers in Austin. BIAP is also in discussions with other major cable companies who are interested in bringing interactivity to their customers.
"The first television broadcast was in 1925 - 80 years ago. TV has been a very powerful medium, but the basic TV experience has not evolved significantly since its introduction and still remains essentially passive and one-dimensional. Today, BIAP has changed the television arena permanently by bringing the social, economic, and intellectual dimensions of the Internet to TV for the first time," said SCP managing general partner and BIAP chairman Winston J Churchill.
The software used to bring eBay to TV was developed by BIAP to run on "edge" devices such as cable set-top boxes that have limited computing power. It employs artificial intelligent agents to continuously retrieve, aggregate, and display content from any digital source. As a result of this distributed architecture, the system can be easily scaled to a virtually unlimited number of users with no upgrade to network servers at the cable headend. The software can also be automatically downloaded through the cable network without the need for any truck rolls, thereby facilitating rapid, low-cost deployment. Only minimal additional network traffic is created by its operation.
"BIAP's technology is truly revolutionary, not just because of the eBay capability, but because there are so many other potential interactive applications where it can be applied. I've been working with BIAP since its inception, helping them refine their technology and their business model. This is a company ahead of the curve that has the staying power to remain there," said SCP venture partner Bobby Yablunsky.
BIAP was founded in 1998, by M. Ellen Dudar, Dr. Louis Slothouber, Charles Shotton and SCP Private Equity Partners. Together, they developed revolutionary ways to access information using artificial intelligence.
The first item purchased using eBay on TV interactive television was a pair of cowboy boots!
