Full-Motion Video From Reuters: Forex TV On The RT

As expected (IMD, Oct. 25), Reuters is planning to launch a real-time full-motion video service by the middle of the year. The service will be delivered to PC-based Reuter Terminals or to independent video monitors in the trading room.

The service will carry Reuters-proprietary video broadcasts targeted at the foreign exchange market. It will initially be available in London and continental Europe. According to Reuters' editor-in-chief Mark Wood, who's heading up the project, "We're starting off by targeting our biggest market, the one we think we know best: foreign exchange."

Wood says that Reuter's FX TV service is just the first of a range of video services for different financial clients. "Equities is the obvious next one," he says. Ultimately, the services would be interactive, giving users the ability to call up programming at will, Wood says.

Although the service will debut in London and continental Europe, plans are in place to add North America and Asia. Wood declines to provide launch dates for either region, but says that Reuters NewMedia Inc. (IMD, Dec. 7) will be involved in the project's development here. Reuters lately named Buford Smith president of the U.S.-based NewMedia unit, a venture to exploit opportunities in multimedia.

Though all details of Reuters' marketing and development plans for the service were not available at press time, the service now appears to be a collaboration between Reuters' news division and its Reuters Television subsidiary.

According to Wood, beta testing of the FX TV service by banks in London and Europe are slated to begin soon. He declines to name the participants. Wood says that a price schedule and a specific launch will be determined later, pending successful completion of beta tests.

Reuters' forex TV won't be delivered on the same paradigm as consumer broadcast television. Programming and information will be broadcast by Reuters bundled into the RTs via existing digital data feeds. Images will need to be stored in a local processor, which will decode them for display in a window on the RT. Wood declines to elaborate on the technology Reuters will use to do so.

These broadcasts will initially include a morning economic round-up, live press conferences, economic announcements and interviews with market analysts. Reuters is also planning to install cameras in the trading rooms of some of the largest institutions in London and continental Europe in its effort to get immediate response to market events.

Wood maintains that digital compression will allow Reuters to send the signal, together with its digital data feeds, via satellite or over some of the land lines currently in place in Europe, directly to the RT user. "We've done prototypes and we've got all the architecture assembled," Wood says.

However, in North America -- where satellite delivery is less widespread and land lines still plenty expensive -- the Reuters service may prove far more costly to deliver. Some sources maintain that Reuters' terrestrial network doesn't have the capacity to handle full-motion video. They point to Reuters' decision to deliver the video service initially via satellite rather than landlines as evidence of the vendor's network's shortcomings.

Though Wood maintains that Reuters "can do both," he would only get specific about Europe's network's ability to handle video. Says Wood: "Most landlines in Europe are capable of transmitting the feed."

In addition, only Reuter Terminals equipped with video cards will be capable of receiving the service. Wood maintains that most of the RTs in Europe already are so equipped. "Video cards are becoming pretty standard equipment in Reuter Terminals," Wood says -- though, he adds, "it varies from place to place."

"The beauty of this is the architecture," he maintains. All that is required at the user site is a decoder box and a local storage facility, he says. He declines to provide further details. "From there it goes straight to the Reuter Terminal or on to a monitor in the dealing room if they prefer."

Even though both the local storage facility and the decoder box will require installation, Wood says Reuters "will be able to enable thousands of subscribers very, very quickly." In fact, he asserts, "we can enable most of our clients in a few months, if not a few weeks."

Reuters' latest video effort follows the vendor's unsuccessful attempt to introduce TV 2000 several years ago. TV 2000, like Reuters' FX TV, was a financial video service for the trading room. But Woods says the service now envisioned will be far different, not only in terms of focus -- "this is more news oriented" -- but also in terms of delivery. TV 2000 had to be delivered to a separate monitor on the trader's desk, "which was awkward at the end of the day," he says.

Reuters' foreign exchange video service follows Dow Jones' entry in the full motion arena last year. The Dow Jones Investor Network is a proprietary video news service aimed at investment management firms. Though it went live six months ago, it has fewer than 100 customers.

Although Wood is spearheading the project, all technical aspects are being handled by Geoffrey Chapman, who has been named director of news products. Jonathan Engels, who was previously capital markets editor, assumes the role of editor for financial television. Nigel Baker, who was previously news editor for Reuters' Good Morning TV (its breakfast news program), has been named senior television manager for financial television.

In keeping with its plans to deliver news from all the key financial centers at launch, Reuters has been recruiting fresh editorial talent in London, Frankfurt, New York and Tokyo, Wood says. "But to a large degree we're building with our existing resources," including Reuters Television staffers. Wood wouldn't comment on how many new staffers would be hired or current employees redeployed to the project.

Do dealers really want a video service that runs in a window on their workstation? Wood says yes and Reuters clearly agrees. A survey of current Reuters subscribers revealed that market participants "want information in different forms. They don't just want text, they also want graphics and video and you've got to offer them information in all those forms to meet their requirements."

Reuters foreign exchange television service will include live coverage "of any event which is of potential interest to the market," Wood says. In some cases, "video can be a more efficient means of communication than text in terms of timeliness and sometimes content."