October 7, 2009

Flash player for ESPN Euro portal

Filed under: 2008 archive, Press — Tags: , , , , , , — Eugene @ 1:44 pm

Release date: 15th October 2008

Pushbutton has designed and built a fully transactional broadband video player for the leading American sports media brand, ESPN. The company partnered with Entriq on this project.

The European portal enables ESPN viewers to browse and select the latest NFL football games, baseball, ice hockey, basketball and many other exclusive matches available from the number one name in American sports television.

Pushbutton’s role was to design and develop the front end of the portal, and handle all of the integration with ESPN’s technology provider, Entriq. The player also integrates closely with the DoubleClick ad serving and reporting technology.

Pushbutton Managing Director, Paula Byrne, said “The ESPN portal is a tremendous showcase for Pushbutton’s growing broadband and IPTV output. We are well known for our interactive television design and build work on the satellite platform, now customers can see the benefits of using a design firm with a TV heritage, as opposed to Web shop background, for broadband projects based on TV and video properties.”

Interactive portal for Ocean Finance

Filed under: 2008 archive, Press — Tags: , , , , — Eugene @ 1:42 pm

Release date: 15th September 2008

Pushbutton has provided an interactive application to support a new finance channel dedicated to the products and services offered by the UK’s leading finance broker, Ocean Finance.

Pushbutton has provided an interactive application to support a new finance channel dedicated to the products and services offered by the UK’s leading finance broker, Ocean Finance.

The channel went live on the 15th of September on Sky channel 888. Pressing the red button on the Sky remote controller enables viewers to bring up an application where they can view additional videos and read more content about Ocean’s range of products.

Managing Director, Paula Byrne, said, “We are delighted to have collaborated with Canis Media and with Ocean Finance on the launch of their new channel, and we wish them every success.”

Bar X 5 slot machine for Sky Vegas

Filed under: 2008 archive, Press — Tags: , , , , , , — Eugene @ 1:29 pm

Release date: 18th August 2008

Pushbutton has collaborated with Sky Vegas to launch a new slot machine for its popular interactive TV-based gaming service.

Bar X 5 is a classic, retro style three-reel slot machine with nudge and hold features, based on an original Electrocoin design. Sky viewers can play Bar X 5 using the remote controller, either for fun or for real money via a credit card subscription.

The game was designed by Sky and built in record time by Pushbutton’s development team. Bar X 5 successfully negotiated the exacting testing and compliance procedures for the launch of a new slot machine on satellite TV – passing with flying colours and going live two weeks early.

Pushbutton Managing Director, Paula Byrne, said, “Sky Vegas is a very important client, and I am delighted to see the Bar X 5 project complete so efficiently. Following the successful launch of Juicy Jackpot earlier this year for Sky, this proves once again that when it comes to delivering complex, transactional services on satellite TV or IPTV, Pushbutton delivers on time and on budget.”

Juicy Jackpot 2 slot machine for Sky

Filed under: 2008 archive, Press — Tags: , , , , , , — Eugene @ 1:26 pm

Release date: 29th April 2008

Juicy Jackpot 2 is the latest application built by the Pushbutton development team.

Pushbutton worked closely with Sky to create this fun slots game, which is now live as part of the Sky Vegas interactive service.

Available 24/7 on the BSkyB digital satellite platform, the new game allows users to stake from as little as 20 pence per spin for the chance to win a substantial progressive jackpot prize, as well as a range of payouts based on the traditional single-line fruit machine format.

For players who want to continue to watch television while they play Juicy Jackpot 2, the game offers a picture-in-picture mode; this, and the vibrant animated UI, presented particular technical challenges for the development team at Pushbutton.

James Cumberbatch, Pushbutton’s Development Director, commented “Our team worked closely with designers and technical staff at Sky over a long period to achieve this great-looking result; we’ve managed to squeeze what are effectively two games – one full-screen and one picture-in-picture, into the bandwidth often allocated for just one”.

Pushbutton Managing Director, Paula Byrne, added “We’re very proud of what we’ve achieved with the Juicy Jackpot 2 service, and we’re excited to be working on more of these games with Sky through 2008 and beyond.”

Last year Pushbutton helped Sky to launch an interactive TV Guide and reminders service targetted at users without PVR set-top boxes.

Nat Geo portal relaunches with video

Filed under: 2008 archive, Press — Tags: , , , , — Eugene @ 1:22 pm

Release date: February 4, 2008

National Geographic Channel interactive service on Sky has been radically redesigned and re-engineered by Pushbutton to switch the emphasis to bonus video and promotional show reels for hot new shows.

The application launches with a totally new look based on a dedicated ‘skin’ design for each popular series. The plan is that there will be several of these dedicated skins launching over the next few months – with a new one appearing every couple of weeks to chime with NGC promotional activity around big premieres and new series launches.

The new design has been achieved by creating the most flexible palette for an interactive TV service that Pushbutton has created to date. All assets including bitmap images, backgrounds, video streams, and button shapes can be quickly re-assembled to create new skins – allowing much greater creative freedom for interactive producers.

Popular interactive features from the previous application such as fact ticker, votes, competitions, and viewers club are carried forward into the new application, but with a more attractive image- heavy look and minimal text.

The interactive service has been strengthened on the back end to allow NGC to use its interactive service more effectively as a vehicle for sponsors.

The application now supports things like ‘deep linking’ from a trigger directly to a specific item in the application. Multiple responses with different phone tariffs are supported to allow a sponsoring car manufacturer, for example, to embed a brochure or test drive request into its sponsors’ area.

Direct sign up to the popular viewers club is now also supported by the red button service, allowing NGC to aggressively market membership via its interactive TV service.

James Cumberbatch, Pushbutton’s Director of Interactive Television, said “With top quality short-form videos always available from National Geographic channel – it made sense in the YouTube era to plug that into NGC’s interactive TV service. It just works, simple as that.”

© Pushbutton 2010