TMCnet News
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[January 13, 2004] PlayJam Launches on EchoStar's Dish Network to over 7 Million Homes in U.S. OpenTV, an interactive television company, has announced that its interactive games channel, PlayJam, has launched on EchoStar's Dish Network and is available to over 7 million OpenTV enabled Dish Network subscribers.With the completion of this launch, PlayJam, one of the world's most popular interactive television games channels, is now available to 20 million households worldwide and on over eight cable and satellite networks. Viewers access the PlayJam Channel, along with a wide range of interactive services, from the DISH Home portal. Dish Network subscribers can select from a channel menu of popular games and are able to play and preview the first level of each of the games. If the viewer wishes to access additional game levels, they may subscribe to the service through the Dish Network, for which EchoStar currently charges its subscribers $4.99 a month. A dynamic menu application allows the games on the channel to be updated frequently. As part of its working relationship with EchoStar, OpenTV has also created several other interactive applications for EchoStar subscribers over the past four years, including: Instant Weather, Bloomberg, News by Reuters, Horoscope, Fantasy Sports, My Scores, Pro Football, College Football, Soccer, College Hoops, and Big League TV (Baseball), all running on OpenTV's patented middleware technology. "We're excited to have launched PlayJam on Dish Network," said James Ackerman, CEO, OpenTV. "We hope to keep viewers engaged with PlayJam by providing them with a rotation of unique and compelling interactive games from our library of over 300 games." "We're pleased to round out our interactive games offering with the addition of PlayJam," said Scott Higgins, Director of Sales for Programming, EchoStar. "We continue to build and expand our interactive offerings through our OpenTV relationship, and we congratulate both OpenTV and our employees on the recent PlayJam launch." Screen shots showing three PlayJam games and two menu screens are being distributed with this release. An online demonstration of this new PlayJam Channel is available at www.opentv.com/PlayJamUSA. If you have any questions regarding PlayJam USA specifically, please call 415-962-5174 or email [email protected]. |