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The first live demonstration of audience chat and text messaging on cinema screens took place in the UK on Thursday with technology courtesy of Aepona.
Two UCI cinemas broadcast a DVD of the rock band Muse while audiences sent text messages to the screen, voted for their favourite songs and sent messages from one cinema to the other by text.
"The event previewed the Aepona Venue Interactive Platform, our new SMS technology. The platform works with the digital projector in the cinema," Adam Holt, head of interaction platforms for Aepona told ElectricNews.Net. Holt said the system relays text messages to the cinema screen via a connection with the projector itself. The platform also has a back-office system to handle the voting facility.
Aepona specialises in SMS and 3G technologies. The company employs almost 130 people in Ireland at its headquarters in Belfast and offices in Dublin and it has approximately 120 staff in the UK.
The aspiration for the platform is that it will change cinemas into interactive centres in the same way that interactivity has expanded the possibilities for television audiences. "We think that this kind of interactivity brings this to a level beyond what you can do with 35 millimetre cinema," Holt said. "It's a natural match, because cinema-goers tend to be text users. I think the community possibilities are exciting."
The event also demonstrated the partnerships formed between Aepona, venue provider UCI, and content provider Filmserve.
The three companies are going to evaluate the event and are hoping to follow it up with a live band playing a concert instead of a DVD broadcast. "This is part of an ongoing programme for us. In the next few months we hope to do a live concert, with the same chat and voting onscreen," said Geoff Lowe, CEO of Filmserve. "It is a distinct possibility that we could do it in Ireland."
Aepona has facilitated the technology for broadcast and SMS already this year when it ran the SMS voting for the 2002 Brit Awards. The company's clients include O2 and Vodafone.
The new Venue Interactive Platform that Aepona is using for interactive cinema experiences has been developed by Aepona England, formerly Ericsson Mobile Applications. Aepona Group acquired the Ericsson Mobile Applications division in 2001.
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