By Kim Tae-gyu
Staff Reporter



Korean corporations plan to merge the two strongest media on the globe _ television and the Internet _ into a single form of TV portal.
Daum Communications, one of the country’s most-visited Internet portal sites, Thursday said it aims to launch commercial TV portal services late this year.

``We will move contents and applications of Internet portals toward TV to help Net illiterates enjoy the benefits of the high-speed connection,’’ Daum spokeswoman Jody Chung said.

The TV portal enables people to savor various contents like movies, music, education, games and Karaoke, as well as on-demand programming on television screens.

Over the long haul, the service is expected to evolve into T-commerce, in which viewers will be able to purchase merchandise shown during a soap opera by simply pushing buttons on a remote control.

All previous portals have been based on the Internet via personal computers, but the keyboard interface is less user-friendly.

``Our top priority was to make a remote control-based interface that will not scare off the less Internet savvy, including children and senior citizens,’’ Chung said.

Daum, which opened its Internet portal in 1997, already conducted a trial of the TV portal late last year at about 200 households in partnership with Samsung Electronics, the nation’s runner-up home appliance maker.

Since last month, Daum has teamed up with Samsung’s rival LG Electronics to carry out a second-round test run with 100 homes.

``The response has been literally explosive. During the non-prime time periods, like at midday or in the dead of night, TV portals showed a higher audience rating than terrestrial programs,’’ Chung said.

Necessary Gear for TV Portals

To sign up for the fancy TV portal services, must-have equipment includes set-top boxes, broadband connections and digital TVs.

Among them, a high-speed Internet connection is not a problem as about 12 million houses among the nation’s total 15.5 million are hooked up to the broadband.

Set-top boxes will retail between 200,000 won and 300,000 won with prices expected to be lower under a mandatory subscription period.

The only concern is the currently available expensive digital TV, because the penetration rate of the high-end appliance is less than 10 percent. But the figure is projected to rise when budget models start to debut next year.

Currently, digital TV retails at higher than 2 million won per unit but the price is likely to slide lower, as early as the end of this year.

Daum has yet to fix its pricing policy on whether to adopt fixed-rate charges or pay-as-you-go systems for TV portal services. In either case, the outfit is considering discounting the set-top box prices as cable TV operators today do.

In addition to Daum, the country’s leading high-speed Internet service carriers of KT and Hanaro Telecom prepare to jump onto the TV portal bandwagon.

KT and Hanaro plan to embrace a unique strategy of cocktailing TV portals with Internet protocol (IP) TV, which boasts almost infinite number of channels.

IP TV, sometimes called broadband TV, refers to packet-based real-time broadcasting on the Internet, which promises more new possibilities for end users than legacy broadcasts.

It has actually no channel limitations as long as the networks don’t suffer overloads and enjoy global coverage, while satellite and over-the-air channels can also be received by encoding them into the IP network.

voc200@koreatimes.co.kr