Verizon's EBIF Rollout

Here was one more item from the Verizon FiOS TV 1.6 IMG update from last week - the implemention of EBIF (Enhanced TV Binary Exchange Format). Verizon officials told us that they rolled out an EBIF application for the Beijing Olympics coverage on MSNBC. According to an article from CED Magazine, the application was developed by interactive TV (iTV) specialist Ensequence for NBC’s coverage of the Olympics. It provided users the option to call up Olympics news and receive medal-count information, all updated in real time, at the click of a button.

The NBC Olympics application did not feature an advertising component, but Verizon officials noted that it would be simple to run banner ads with EBIF.

Wikipedia has a good definition of EBIF. It is a specification developed under OpenCable and it was developed to optimize the creation multimedia pages (like widgets) that are "Web-like" in their functionality.