News Corp's NDS has announced that its product NDS iRespond is being used by Discovery Networks International (DNI), a business division of global real-world media and entertainment company Discovery Communications.

Discovery is aiming to streamline the production of interactive applications. NDS iRespond, the core product of NDS' Value@TV Production Suite, is an intuitive authoring tool, which eases the production of content providers' applications for both different platforms and other markets. As the first factual entertainment broadcaster to successfully launch enhanced and interactive programming in the UK in 2001, Discovery now uses interactivity as a key element of its strategy to attract and grow audiences. NDS iRespond will be used by Discovery to produce, preview and publish interactive content, and, will be integrated with the broadcaster's content management system.

An official release informs that NDS iRespond was designed by NDS to lower the lead times, complexity and skill requirements for iTV content production, three major barriers to mass deployment of interactive programs. Now, using NDS iRespond's intuitive interfaces, interactive applications can be created in a matter of hours rather than weeks

DNI's new media applications go far beyond conventional television, recreating the Discovery experience for audiences through innovative, rich content and exciting new modes of storytelling. With NDS's iRespond the broadcaster will increase interactive programming, extending its reach not only in new ways, but also onto new platforms and in new markets.

Interactive television has reached a stage where it is no longer experimental, but an integral part of digital TV programming. The industry needs solutions, which allow quick and simple content-production, which has resulted in NDS iRespond and the Value@TV Production Suite. Working closely with Discovery NDS calims to have developed a workflow as used in interactive TV production, which enables a large amount of quality content to be quickly developed for different platforms.

Using simple web based interfaces, NDS iRespond allows a content editor to produce, preview and publish interactive content for television across different platforms, while the broadcaster retains control over what goes on air. Simple applications like voting, quizzes, messaging, enhanced content etc. can be created in less than 15 minutes. NDS iRespond is a server-based product, which can be hosted by the broadcaster, and the functionality made available to remote users via the Web. NDS iRespond interfaces to third party content management systems and response processing systems.