Interactivity, mis-used as all-improving buzzword way too often, is one of today's new media unique advantages over traditional media. Cleverly used, interactivity provides a deeper, meaningful and more intensive user experience than any enhancement in audio or video technology can offer.

During the Interactive Media Programme at TTVO, Finland, I got quite deep into the pleasures and limitations of today's DVD specifications while authoring our course DVD. I've been working intensively with Sonic DVD Creator, the state-of-the-art application which is also used for most larger commercial productions.
On our DVD we integrated 4:3 and 16:9 videos, multi-angle and multi-language material, stills and interactive slideshows as well as a DVD-ROM part. So at the end the screen looked way more packed than on the screenshot shown here. And I also got to know the difference between a good TV and one with built-in digital compression as well as the difference between cheap and good DVD players. :-)

Ever wanted to be Santa Claus? Well, then you should start your training right away, with SimSanta for example, the interactive Santa Claus trainings simulation.
SimSanta looks a little bit like an ego-shooter: The player, as Santa Claus Junior, meets different characters and has 3 choices each how to deal with the characters. When clicking one of the action buttons, the corresponding digital video piece shows up. The aim is to collect as many 'ho-ho-ho points' as possible, but time is always against you...
This is a project I created during an interactive movie workshop, part of the Interactive Media Programme @ TTVO, Finland. The workshop was organized by Chris Hales. During the workshop every participant created an interactive film for use on desktop computers, including storyboarding, digital video filming, editing and encoding, graphic design, soundFX recording and and programming (here: game engine, user interactions, video branching) - all done in 1 week!

This is a CD-ROM I created together with fellow students during the workshop 'multimedia productions'. It is a kind of virtual talk show about the effects of violence in media.
In the main menu the user selects an 'opponent'. Within the discussion you can choose your arguments from the fly-in menu. We have been creating a huge amount of audio and digital video material as all arguments and reactions are played back in realtime.
Because of the non-linear storyboard all video sequences are smoothly cut one after another by our Lingo DB/AV framework in a way that the user will hardly notice any transitions.
We created the complete application with Director, Flash and QuickTime.

Back in winter 1997 I was working with a youth group on creating a modern variation of the x-mas story. The result was a spontaneous photo story we shot in our small town. 'Interactive x-mas' is an evolution of this photo story. I scanned the pictures, wrote linking text passages and combined everything into a web-based interactive x-mas photo story.
What should Mary and Jo (these are the new names in my interactive version) do? Try the hotel first or trying to find a place to sleep at Jo's brother's? These and many more options are things the user of 'interactive x-mas' can decide with a simple mouse click.
http://www.cat-net.de/xmas (in German)