TVSquad

CED Magazine is carrying a piece about a continued joint partnership between Showtime and EchoStar which will give birth to Showtime Interactive 2.0. The concept behind the deal is to create a zone accessible via EchoStar PVRs where users can go to get exclusive material.

So far it looks like there will be the usual kind of stuff, like interviews with various celebrities, "the making of" style of videos as well as extras for some of the original content that Showtime puts out.

This will also be used as a means to try and pull in new Showcase subscribers as well. In the "Interactive Zone" there will be a "Get Showtime" option that you can select, which will automatically sign you up for the channel. Hopefully there will be a parental lock on there to stop a sudden surge in Showtime subscribers.

I would hazard to guess that the PVR portion of this deal comes in as a means of storing the content. It would probably make more sense, and create a better user experience, if the content is downloaded to the hard drive for viewing instead of having to sit there while it fetches the content.