Now TV viewers can interact in real time using their mobile phones

Japan’s major terrestrial TV station TV Asahi and Hong Kong based Artificial Life, today announced the launch of a one hour interactive mobile participation TV show with the Japanese title: “Hoshi-ichi owarairyoku test” scheduled to air late night of June 14th, 2008. Legions of mobile users will be represented on-screen, live in real time as custom 3D avatars on a system that can apparently scale to animate 100,000 concurrent identities, will participate in the contest. The Japanese celebrity, Kendo Kobayashi, will host the pilot show and guide television viewers through the innovative one hour game show format.
(Full press release after the jump)

During the program, participants use their mobile phones to interact with the live show by controlling their own 3D animated avatars which appears on their own TV screen and compete with other viewers by using their avatars for answering quiz questions. The winner of the quiz challenge is awarded a prize sponsored by TV Asahi.
Hong Kong, June 5, 2008 – TV ASAHI, Japan’s major terrestrial TV station and Hong Kong based Artificial Life, Inc. (OTC BB: ALIF, www.artificial-life.com) a leading full service provider of award winning mobile technology and applications, today announced the launch of a one hour interactive mobile participation TV show with the Japanese title: “Hoshi-ichi owarairyoku test” scheduled to air late night of June 14th, 2008. The Japanese celebrity, Kendo Kobayashi, will host the pilot show and guide television viewers through the innovative one hour game show format.
During the program, participants use their mobile phones to interact with the live show by controlling their own 3D animated avatars which appears on their own TV screen and compete with other viewers by using their avatars for answering quiz questions. The winner of the quiz challenge is awarded a prize sponsored by TV ASAHI.
Eberhard Schoneburg, Artificial Life’s Chief Executive Officer, said, “This is a great opportunity for us. We are excited to be airing our first interactive TV show in Japan. The format of the show is very unique even for Japan in that viewers will be able to interact with live 3D representations of themselves in the form of cute animated avatars as well as to participate and interact with the show’s hosts in real time. Our SMS Galaxy is already successful in Europe and we are now entering the Asian markets as well as live sports entertainment arenas with this unique technology. We are very thankful to TV ASAHI for the positive and promising cooperation we now have together.”
The TV show is produced by Artificial Life, Inc. and runs on their unique real-time 3D scene engine and mobile TV interface technology, SMS Galaxy™. SMS Galaxy™ enables live TV broadcasters to support real-time viewer interaction with their shows using their mobile phones. Viewers may use mobile web, short message service (SMS) or any other communication channel supported by SMS Galaxy™ to register before or during the show to select their on-TV screen name along with their animated 3D avatar of choice. In the television studio, a real time joystick control allows a studio operator to generate a camera path flying through the 3D scene of all participating viewers’ avatars. SMS Galaxy is highly scalable and can animate over 100,000 participants in real time. The system consists of special purpose hardware and servers and proprietary software to control the mobile interaction.
Naoto Ueda, TV Asahi Corporation, Co-Director, Intermedia Programming, Programming Department, said, “We are extremely pleased to introduce such an adventurous entertainment project to our Japanese audience tied with Artificial Life, Inc. In this age of demassification and diversification, it is vital for us to redefine ways to enjoy TV programs such as by combining them with other media devices. Now that a mobile phone has literally become an alter ego, particularly for the young generation, I am convinced that they will truly enjoy the excitement of virtually appearing on TV as a 3D animated avatar, thanks to SMS Galaxy™.”