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Nationale Postcode Loterij (NPL) is one of the official lotteries in The Netherlands, and a very active TV show partner. For years, Miljoenenjacht, produced by Endemol and broadcast by RTL, has been a staple in Dutch TV, a Sunday night blockbuster. In fact, Miljoenenjacht is the source of Deal or No Deal, which is a mini-game within the larger format. In May 2012 for the first time viewers could play online while watching the TV show & win: €1.250 or a bicycle.

Miljoenenjacht goes mobile

The Miljoenenjacht mobile second screen was created by Ex Machina for Nationale Postcode Loterij based on designs by Moblio. The TV production company is Endemol and RTL is the broadcaster. Both Android and iPhone apps were available and both were an instant success. During the show got to answer 5 questions as well as submit a slogan. The results were judged by NPL and a winner was drawn, before the show was over. The amount of participation was much higher than anyone expected and the call to action on TV by presenter Linda de Mol created unprecedented conversion to the Google Play and Apple app stores. In fact, during the day the app was not listed in the top downloaded apps yet before the show had ended it had reached #1 in the app store.

Facts & Figures

• Available during last two episodes of Spring 2012 season
• First second screen app to offer a cash prize to a winner
• Reached number 1 in the Apple App Store
• Available for Android and iOS
• More than 100K downloads

GAMES FOR TV: While all the talk may currently be about the ‘gamification’ of television, Ex Machina founder and CEO Jeroen Elfferich argues that the entertainment industry needs to think along rather different lines.

I get home from work, looking forward to spending the evening on the couch. I’ve always enjoyed the gameshow that’s on, so now they’ve released a new series I can play along with, it’s even better. Quite a few of my friends will be joining too. I’ll be checking in with them online. The show’s gameplay is simple enough that even my sister has gotten herself a new device to try to beat me. At 20.00, the show starts – a familiar tune, the host comes on stage and soon it’s time for the first question. The main contestant is trying to hang in there, facing a ‘mob’ of 100 opponents in the studio, and a ‘crowd’ of 100,000 more playing along from home. Will he take away the big prize, or will the mob beat him?

Sounds like a very 2012 idea, right? Take an established TV gameshow, add a big second-screen play-along experience. Except this isn’t broadcast on TV, it doesn’t have a second screen and the year is 2009. It’s a video game unlike anything before: Microsoft’s 1 vs 100 for Xbox Live.

1 vs 100 on Xbox Live didn’t just use its TV heritage to help players understand its game mechanics. Much more than any previous TV show-based digital game it embraced several TV principles and included them in its core design. You couldn’t play whenever you fancied; it was scheduled as a once-per-week, fully interactive episode and marketed as such. It was presented by a live host, represented by an avatar, as were all contestants. The ‘level’ looked like a TV studio. It was based on a format created and licensed by Endemol. Localised versions for several markets were created. Editorial teams made sure each episode had fresh, balanced content.

The game was released in the US, UK, Germany and France. It ran for two seasons, was played by millions of people and received a place in the Guinness Book of Records for ‘most contestants in a single gameshow ever’: 114,000.

Now I must admit I get a bit misty-eyed when this subject is brought up. At Ex Machina, we developed part of the back-end of the game and were fortunate enough to be working with the super-smart people at Microsoft Xbox that created the title. I truly thought that large-scale interactive entertainment like this would take the world by storm. And then Microsoft cancelled the title after its second season, much to the disappointment of many Xbox gamers and their families. To date, no other videogame has come close to this kind of experience.

Something else happened though. People started buying touchscreen devices en masse, and it’s become socially acceptable to use them in living rooms. This has led to an enormous surge in media multi-tasking, or ‘second screen’ as it’s usually called.

The first wave of second screen can be defined as enriching TV shows with a second-screen experience. TV leads, online follows. TV the first screen, online the second – the companion app. And in quite a few cases (more than I would deem healthy) ‘gamification’ is sprinkled on these second-screen experiences – points, badges, levelling up. It may jazz up the mundane act of checking in on a show or recognising an ad, but it doesn’t a game make.

Few people realise that prior to radio and TV, playing games was the number-one pastime. Broadcast media turned us into passive media consumers. So let’s consider the whole gamification thing a rediscovery of something we already knew, and never utter that horrible word again.

Fortunately there’s a new wave of interactive entertainment coming. We’re starting to see content that is designed from the ground up for multi-screen consumption and interaction. No more first- or second-screen distinction; it’s all blending together.

But we’ve only started to scratch the surface. I expect to see fresh online concepts that reach new heights when TV mechanics are applied to them. If sufficient people participate and generate enough relevant data that can, in turn, become information that can be aggregated, packaged attractively and presented on TV. Online first, TV second – a TV show as the companion experience to an online game. The ultimate media feedback loop.

1 vs 100 on Xbox Live gives us good pointers for this: artificial scarcity, episodic content, mass participation in an event – as much ‘appointment TV’ as it is a gigantic multiplayer game session. If you dislike the term gamification, brace yourself for an even more offensive one: TVification – coming to a social media conference near you soon.

Gare Maritime, MIPTV

Sunday 5.30pm sees the drinks reception Ex Machina co-sponsors together with audio sync specialists Civolution. It takes place at the Gare Maritime as well and is invite only, so contact us if you’d like to receive an invite.

Fusion is a pan-BBC training initiative from the BBC Academy which aims to help everyone take advantage of the creative opportunities offered by new technology.

The presentation was captured by BBC Academy and uploaded to youtube:

My theory is that the more connected a TV is, the less it needs to be able to do by itself. Connectivity means the processing, the control, storage, the heavy lifting can all be done by other, more suitable devices than the TV set itself. Control your TV with an intuitive UI on a device you actually like to use, and never loose: a smartphone or tablet. Browse available content – local and in the cloud – and push, swipe or stream it to the TV for it to start playing near instantly. Again, from a device you’re already holding while sitting on your couch. Discover, talk about and interact with content that you’re watching. You guessed it, from a tablet or smartphone. It seems almost anything you’d want to do on your TV can come from other devices and the networks it’s connected to. So how much does a TV itself really needs to be able to do anymore?

Applying this theory to Apple and their imminent announcements, here’s my purely speculative set of predictions, or should I say wish list, of what Apple’s next TV product is.

• Let’s call it the TV Stick. Physically it’s a dongle with an HDMI connector so you just plug it into your TV. It swivels so it’s suitable for wall mounted TVs with both rear and sideways facing ports. It’ll be hidden from sight.
• TV Stick is able to a run on the power it draws from the HDMI port (for newer TVs that support that), so the only cable your TV needs is power. For older TVs a micro USB port is present so it can run on external power, perhaps provided by a spare USB port on the TV set
• It can output 1080p. For that reason it’ll have to be powered by an iPhone 4S / iPad 2 class processor or better
• TV Stick has an updatable database with HDMI-CEC () codes so it can control the TV it’s connected, e.g. turn TV power on, switch it to the HDMI port it’s plugged into, change volume to a desired level
• It has 802.11n (or better yet the still faster 802.11ac) so it connects to your WiFi with enough wireless bandwidth for 1080p streaming. Plus it uses the connection via Bonjour to iTunes and iOS devices on the local network
• It’s able to stream movies, TV series, music videos and more from the iTunes store in the cloud, plus from any PC or Mac running iTunes on the local network
• Your music collection, plus now also your home videos, photo’s etcetera can be accessed via iCloud, which will also support video and image content
• It has some local storage, say 16GB so its price stays low. This allows it to buffer and pre-fetch content locally for instant playback when you start streaming a show (say you’re into Big Bang Theory, it will automatically download and store the first minute of the next unseen episode, and will start pulling in the remainder of the episode once you’ve started it)
• Why not throw in Siri and have it listen to voice commands. Although when plugged into the back of a TV this may not work so well.
• And of course the killer app is Airplay support. Any media you can access on your iPhone, iPod Toch, iPad and (soon) Mac can be seamlessly and in glorious 1080p be pushed or mirrored to your TV via this device. Makes it into a great alternative for games consoles too.

So this is basically a smaller, smarter and probably cheaper to produce version of the current second generation Apple TV, you know, the ‘still a hobby’ product. Or look at it as a dumbed down, cheaper iPhone 4S – without the screen, battery, camera and cellular chips. It doesn’t need an app store – your tablet or iPhone already has one, you can find any content you’d ever want there, and you can mirror or stream it straight to your TV Stick. It’s a cheap yet powerful platform, combining the best of your iOS device with the biggest screen in your house. It has more brain, at a much lower cost, than any ‘smart TV’ offers.

One rather important feature is still missing though. The TV bit.

I think the answer is a separate device, wirelessly linked to the TV Stick. Let’s call it the TV Base. Like an Airport Express, TV base has Ethernet and Wifi abilities. It too extends the reach of your Wifi to ensure your TV Stick, with its relatively small antenna low power design, gets all the broadband it needs, especially useful if your TV is far from your router. TV Base is able to simultaneously support several TV Sticks, you so you can plug one into each of your TV sets and access the TV Base’s abilities from any of them – simultaneously. TV Base is something you can hide away in a closet under or next to your TV, together with all those ugly boxes and the cable mess. It comes with enough ports so you can you plug the other sources you may still care about into it. A cable box, a games console, a Bluray player. It acts as a smart HDMI switch for these, and pushes any source you select on it wirelessly to the TV Stick and your surround sound system if you have it. Via HDMI-CEC or perhaps an IR emitter it can, once again, control all the devices it’s connected to, and offer this control via a gorgeous UI on an iOS device. TV Base overlays the TV with an elegant UI for big screen feedback and navigation. It provides a unified experience across anything you do on your TV. Siri-based voice control for such a device seems more feasible too.

The killer feature of this box however would be that you can connect it to cable, satellite, terrestrial and IPTV, maybe even all at the same time. You can actually watch TV with this thing. This is the hardest part to make ‘just work’ with all those different standards around the world. However mobile networks like GSM and CDMA are very different too and Apple now supports both. IPTV plus the major US standards plus DVB in its different flavors is a good offering to start with. TV operators can provide a paid subscription specifically for this device, which perhaps means it’ll need a slot for a conditional access module, or a virtualized equivalent. It’s not likely cable companies are willing to accept a lower fee than you pay for one of their boxes, but I also don’t see why they’d charge more, if all they need to provide is a signal and some DRM it should be good business for them. And TV operators no longer have to provide us with UIs, which is a good thing in almost most all of the cases. Instead, TV Base will offer a beautiful on screen EPG plus anything else in the TV UI department that truly matters, and ditches the rest. Top the TV Base capabilities off with some local storage for prefetching on demand content, pausing live TV and storage for your most-likely-to-watch shows.

iCloud with its near infinite storage sits behind every TV Base in the world. iCloud then becomes the worlds biggest, shared DVR, to which you can upload any TV shows you record. Like iTunes Match for music, you can match your recorded TV against Apple’s database so you can watch it back in original hi-def broadcast quality if it’s recognized, just like your 128kbps mp3 music magically becomes 256kbps AAC when streamed back from iCloud. And if the TV show you ‘recorded’ is either matched or uploaded to iCloud, you can stream or download it to any of your TVs. Or to any iOS device. Even when you’re out and about.

Think about the implications of these last three sentences. Could that be what Steve Jobs meant when he said he ‘finally cracked TV’?

The Achilles heel of Apple is of course social and interactive entertainment, which it so far has failed to meaningfully integrate into its media offerings. Nobody uses Ping and Game Center is hopelessly limited. The way iOS integrates Twitter is elegant, but for TV there are so much more opportunities. That’s a challenge I personally think about every single day, so let me save that for a dedicated future post.

While all of this is of course pure speculation there is one fundamental idea behind all of this, which reaches beyond Apple’s fictional new TV ecosystem. Making TV hardware smarter is not important. What matters is to connect and integrate TVs better with the increasingly smart, social, personal and user-friendly devices we already use several hours every day – the smartphone and tablet. And with margins on those far exceeding TV hardware profits, it makes business sense too: TVs need companion devices more than the other way around. Like iTunes, the TV product itself doesn’t need to be a profit center, it can potentially be sold at cost. Because having one means you’ll be needing a new iPad or iPhone, as only the latest version has all the features. Plus each of your family members will need one too. With stratospheric profit margins of iPad and iPhone, any new product that helps sell those at volume is a sound investment.

So, come March 7th I’ll either look like a sage or a fool. The latter is far more likely of course, who knows Apple may be just releasing an updated iPad and declare its Apple TV hobby project dead. Yet in that case perhaps someone else can step up. Samsung, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, I don’t care – I’ll wear the t-shirt, will be lining up in front of your store the night before you launch it and will leave with a TV Base plus TV Sticks for all TV sets in my house.

I’m a dumb, connected TV fanboi.

Topics discussed included how the mass penetration of new devices (smartphones, tablets) is finally delivering the promises of frictionless communication and community; synchronous interaction around events and TV; how meaningful interaction contributes to an ROI; and what the Next Big Thing in entertainment could be: online buzz that leads to live, synchronous, massive scale media.

The condensed 5 minute version (in Dutch):

The full version:

In the first phase of our TV Everywhere enablers mini-series, I discussed Companion TV with second screen expert, Jeroen Elfferich, CEO & co-founder at Ex Machina and how smartphones and tablets are changing the way we create, and enjoy TV. He shared some great insight into how show formats are evolving to embrace our multi-screen lifestyle and how for the first time, the Internet is being harnessed to compliment TV, not to cannibalize it! He also admitted that he spends more time playing games on his iPad then he would have ever imagined!

Who/What is Ex Machina Games? Jeroen Elfferich: We are an online interactivity platform that creates meaningful experiences between TV shows and their audiences, using second screen companion devices such as smartphones and tablets. We work for TV shows, broadcasters, production houses, TV operators and online Internet companies and take interactivity and information distribution to the next level making it social, fun, massive, loyal and sticky.

What problem do you solve? Jeroen Elfferich: Increasingly, people are multi-tasking while watching TV (According to Devious Media 80% of 13-24 year-olds use two or more devices simultaneously while watching TV). Ex Machina gives meaning to what people do on their companion devices while they are watching a TV show e.g. rating contestants in a talent show, or providing feedback during a political debate. We are helping media companies and advertisers make more efficient use of their marketing budgets and time by keeping viewers engaged and providing valuable feedback and contribution. (NOTE: During last weekend’s Super Bowl, eight in 10 “couch consultants” commissioned for a survey by CTV Advertising, said they derived value from the second-screen content experiences. There was also a widespread acceptance and deeper engagement found for ads that rewarded their viewers with specific incentives)

What role do companion devices have to play with the way we watch TV? Jeroen Elfferich: In the future? Everything. For the first time, companion devices are enabling the Internet to compliment TV viewing vs. cannibalizing it. The uptake is so rapid that it is driving innovation and creativity around formats and enabling media companies to have direct dialog with their audiences and build profiles as never before. Companion devices are game changers.

So, what about Connected TVs? Jeroen Elfferich: We need to remember that audiences want an accessible experience regardless of brand of device. The Connected TV market is still fragmented and the addressable market is not as big as other device types. Also, since people only buy a TV every five to six years, their capabilities and processing power can never match that of personal devices which are regularly replaced and upgraded. It ‘s also a matter of concept – it’s better to offer a cleaner and easier experience on a companion device than over-laying features and content on a TV screen. The debate of how to create an integrated, consistent experience across devices is a big one and there is the school of thought that by shifting the intelligence onto the cloud or a home network to support audio sync and network based interaction, operators can finally reach that holy “UX” grail across all devices. For now, however, the companion devices are leading the way, showing us the potential and building a market for multi-screen TV.

What do games have to do with TV? Jeroen Elfferich: Take the traditional concept of a board game, one with personal aspects such as “RISK”, you can now use the main large-screen TV as game board – and players can use their own, personal devices (smart phone, tablet or laptop) as a ‘digital deck of cards’. Add connectivity and social networks and the other players don’t necessarily have to be in the room or country with you. Gaming, or perhaps more accurately interactive entertainment, is mainstream and the communities around the popular Zynga games for instance, are spending as much time together online as are the hard-core MMO PC gamers… if not more so. Create similar, engaging and game-play experiences around TV and you have the perfect format.

So what can TV companies do to integrate gaming into their shows? Jeroen Elfferich. We are witnessing a gradual shift among production companies to create TV formats that drive second screen interaction… but it takes time! In 2007 we presented, with a Dutch production house, a new kind TV format, a quiz game that had no studio contestants and was designed as a multiplayer game viewers who could play along live using a mobile app or laptop. We showed this at MIPTV that year and while broadcasters loved the innovation on display, no one would buy! For somewhat cautious studio execs, a game show where there is no studio audience was just too far-fetched for them at the time. Thankfully, Fremantle saw the potential, came up with the made-for-second-screen format Intuition and last autumn we launched a pilot of 10 shows with RTL and we are very happy with the results. When aired at 1 pm, 10% of viewers picked up their smart phone or tablet and joined the game. Free to play, the game tests viewers’ gut instincts with picture-based questions on people and places. Everyone who takes part in the show wins prize vouchers and the number of vouchers won is determined by the audience’s average score.

What are you currently working on? Jeroen Elfferich: A lot of things, it seems like we’re starting three new projects every week. To mention a few, we are working on Intuition spinoffs with Fremantle; working with a US start up on creating more interactivity around TV commercials via second screen interactivity and testing automated second screen experiences and gaming around music videos with MTV in various European countries which is very exciting. Creating a much more efficient way to produce shows, the concept enables MTV viewers to participate around music videos with their friends, score points and win prizes.

What has been your greatest success to date? Jeroen Elfferich: We ran over 100 shows last year alone and our platform has never failed us… and we usually see tens of thousands of people engaged at the same time! In the last season of The Voice of Holland, for example, our PlayToTV server platform handled over half a million second screen users and over10 million plays of the popular ThuisCoach game.

How do you imagine we will be watching TV in five years time? Jeroen Elfferich: To a large extent the same way as we are today, gathered, with the family around the living room TV. However, this will primarily be for watching and participating in live events that are more communicable such as reality programs, news events and sports. And of course everyone will be using at least two screens, connecting with the TV content as much as they are with family and friends. TV series and movies meanwhile will continue to shift to on demand on any device.

What games do you play? Jeroen Elfferich: I don’t play games as much as I would like to (or used to) and if I do, I try to find games with I can play with my kids. New Super Mario Bros. on the Nintendo Wii is a great, collaborative game and the iPad is a fantastic games device with a good line up of old school board games as well as new experiences designed for touch… it just works!

Ex Machina is a key Irdeto partner, providing second screen TV engagement within Irdeto’s multi-screen user-experiences and reference applications for tablets, smartphones, Connected TVs and other iOS and Android devices.

Johan Schuyt
TransIP hosts a great number of websites, and requires a dependable Javascript framework to run its various client-side services on, Johan explained. Google’s closure not only compiles your scripts in the most optimal way – completely rewriting your code for optimal size and performance – it also provides in a thoroughly tested library that does everything from basic crossbrowser manipulation of the DOM to complex interface components.

Johad admits that taking the step from (for instance) using jQuery to using closure in combination with separate development and production environments, unit testing, build-scripts, and very strict programming conventions may pose a bit of a challenge – even to an experienced team of Javascript developers. The benefits with respect to code quality, performance, size and maintainability however make it totally worth the investment.

Peter Nederlof
My own talk was on CSS transformations, and the benefits of adding a bit of math and Javascript to the mix. After a quick overview of the various transformation and transition properties that modern browsers support, I showed a few examples of triggering transitions with class names, triggering them with events and finally by applying transformations directly to elements with Javascript.

The presentation can be found right here (it’s in Dutch, and a CSS 3D capable browser is advised), and the matrix implementation can be found on github. Enjoy!

First of all our website. Completely redone, reflecting our vision, PlayToTV’s capabilities and recent projects. Feel free browse around and let us know what you think!

Second: project news!

• Together with Civolution, we just introduced a watermark-based audio sync second screen solution for French broadcaster TF1
• We’re about to go live with a new project for MTV, more details on our website soon
• In Germany we ran the season final of Das Grosse Allgemeinwissensquiz for Sat.1
• Plus we’re in the middle of the live shows for The voice of Holland, a massive success by all counts. How about 500.000 users for the second screen app? 1 in 4 Android or iPhone owners in Holland is now playing along!

Third, Richard Morris joined us and heads Ex Machina in London. Arguably the UK is the most advanced market for second screen right now and we’re excited to have Richard on board to manage our growing UK business.

I won’t spend much time predicting what will happen in 2012. One thing is certain though: we’ll all be using more screens, more of the time. To make content take advantage of that is our aim, and we look forward to working with you to make it happen in 2012 and beyond!

On behalf of all of us at Ex Machina, have a great holiday and all the best for the new year!

But fortunately Marloes did and dedicated that evening to rethink what Ex Machina should be about, online. We instantly liked her ideas and in the matter of a few weeks a new site was conceived. We’ve now launched it and we’ll be filling it more and more with product information, case studies and a wide variety of posts. You’ll encounter a cool HTML5-based project carousel, a tighter look, a clearer focus on our unique PlayToTV second screen offering, highlights from our international track record and a proper blog. Finally.

So come on in further and check out what we have to offer? Maybe you’d like to browse our portfolio of second screen projects we’ve done, to read about our history and people, to learn more about our PlayToTV platform or to find out why we’ve picked second screen as the raison d’etre for our company.

We hope you like it here, please share your thoughts and feedback.

Best wishes from all at Ex Machina!