IMN to unveil 'what's to come' at CES

Steven Turner, CEO of Interconnect Media Network (IMN), likes American television, and he thinks there are many others around the world who feel the same way.

Turner is betting his passion for American TV has a working business model in an IP-based subscription service targeted at an international market. And, if that isn't quite enough, he's adding an element of interactive social media to up the ante.

IMN's audience should consist of "ex pats, soldiers, businessmen, people overseas who want to spend time with their family back home," Turner said in an interview with FierceOnlineVideo. "The market doesn't have anything to describe what we're doing. I'm what's to come."

Also to come is a formal launch in February after IMN has done a little preview at CES and at the New Media Expo in Las Vegas in January. There will also be some special promotions for those who sign before the launch with "special promotional rates" that dip below the $10 a month Turner expects to charge for a lineup of about 38 channels of Yankee TV and 5,000 movies on demand.

While Turner is hard-pressed to describe his service in a nutshell, he doesn't have a hard time saying what it's not: a second screen app.

"The second screen apps that people are using now is a bubble market that's not going to be around five years from now," Turner said. "Today the people behind the industry are just basically preparing the market for what's to come. I'm what's to come."

IMN, if it has to be pigeonholed, is best described as IP-delivered OTT that's screen- and OS-independent.

"We give you the same experience whether you're on your 65-inch home theater SurroundSound system or you're on your 5-inch phone. You're going to have the same content, the same quality, an HD system, the same bells and whistles and the same channels," Turner said. "We are completely universal across all devices and all software."

Of course, others have been there and done that, and Turner is aware of them. A big differentiator between IMN and other OTT content providers is the amount of bandwidth needed to make it happen.

"I can give you HD video down to 400 Kbps and below and standard definition below 200 Kbps," he said. "We do it at 60 percent less bandwidth than anybody else."

IMN also offers video chat within a picture-in-picture that runs over top of the live feed--a feature Turner thinks will seal the deal with the international crowd.

"No matter where you are in the world, your family and friends can still be in that digital living room with you," he said. "In the full version you're not limited to one video chat; you can do as many as your bandwidth will allow."

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