And we're not just talking about pretty pictures...................
mediacentral.com
Digital Convergence: Moving Beyond 'Pretty Pictures'
(Cable World) Digital TV is attracting several computer manufacturers, software vendors and Internet-access providers.
At Paul Kagan Associates' digitial TV conference last week, panelist Steve Goldberg, digital TV director at Compaq, brushed aside HDTV as a "niche technology," stating that the PC is "clearly the on-ramp today for most of the people onto the Internet."
He was supported to an extent by an executive from Microsoft, which has teamed up with Compaq, Intel Corp. and Lucent Technologies to try to drive digital TV into the computer arena.
"There are definitely alternate ways to utilize the bandwidth" beyond just "pretty pictures," insisted Paul Mitchell, the general manager of Microsoft's enhanced television group. "You can send a whole lot of data."
That would suit Jeff Barco, the director of Microsoft's WebTV subsidiary, and Phil Monego, the CEO of NetChannel Inc.
WebTV, Barco said, has a "very, very loyal group of subscribers" that he expects will grow to 250,000 by next year when the company adds a Windows CE look to its product.
Monego promised that NetChannel's "fairly low profile" will change next month when the service goes online with, among other things, access to the Internet and an advanced electronic program guide. "Our people believe that what we're all about is putting the television on steroids," he said. "It's not about the Internet to us; it's about TV viewers."
NetChannel will begin to use a 33.6-kbps plain old telephone service modem and add speed with cable and satellite applications "very soon," he added. |
