PC, TV, or Both?
New technology adds interactivity for couch potatoes who want it, say convergence advocates.
by David Needle, special to PC World
November 4, 1999, 9:52 a.m. PT
People from all walks of life rely on it for news, information, and entertainment. It's the most powerful medium in the world. It's [[ital: not ]] the Internet. It's television, and it won't be steamrolled by PCs or other Net devices anytime soon.
"The Internet is powerful, but it will be a long time before it's as widely used in other countries as it is in the U.S.," says Mitch Berman, senior vice president of worldwide marketing for OpenTV, a provider of interactive television technology used by 4.3 million people internationally.
A PC and monthly Internet access charges are more than most people in the world can afford, especially compared with television, Berman notes. OpenTV is slated to be available in the U.S. early next year, through the Dish Network satellite network.
Berman and other panelists debated technology convergence in homes, on a program sponsored by the Churchill Club this week in Silicon Valley.
The hottest thing on the Internet is e-commerce, but Berman showed interactive television's answer: "T-Commerce."
OpenTV sponsors can integrate advertising with content, according to Berman's demonstration. During a broadcast of a prizefight, you could click the remote on Oscar de la Hoya and order a designer shirt he favors.
However, this might not have been the best example; the discontinuity of ordering clothes while watching a fight drew scattered laughs from the audience.
Each Medium to its Strength
Like Replay and Tivo digital video recorders, OpenTV provides a set-top box with a hard drive where you record shows and information. You can pause live events and resume them, because programming is automatically stored for viewing.
But OpenTV can't perform sophisticated transactions like the Web can, and it doesn't operate in real time. For example, OpenTV stores your order for de la Hoya's shirt and uploads it to the satellite link later that evening in its regular update operations.
No technology will "win" consumers completely, notes Roger Black, who heads the Web design consultancy Interactive Bureau.
"The movies didn't kill theater, TV didn't kill radio, and the Internet has failed to kill print," Black says. "Technologies converge, but they also stick around."
Tuner technologies let you watch TV on your PC, and devices like WebTV let you surf the Internet on your television. But Black isn't sure integrating the technologies is the right way to go.
"The PC experience is interactive. You're clicking the mouse, entering information, moving stuff around," Black says. "TV is a laid back, passive, and sometimes even lying-down, experience. Mixing the two seems [unnatural]."
Jeff Morris, Chief Executive of Yack, an online guide to Internet events and programming, paraphrased an Alcoholics Anonymous introduction in stating his position.
"My name is Jeff, and I am a convergaholic," said Morris, a former new media executive with the Showtime cable network.
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Convergence: The Next Generation
The younger generation is primed for interactive services because they grew up with them, Morris says. To illustrate the lengths teens go to communicate, he showed the following PC screen:
LISA55: Hey Sup?
GINNIE4U: NM, U
ANNE23: O, G/G, POS, brb
GINNIE4U: OK C Y L TTFN
"I know this looks like a Morse code distress signal from the Titanic, but it's part of a chat session between my 14-year-old daughter and her friends," Morris says.
The translation:
LISA: Hey, what's up?
GINNIE: Not much. You?
ANNE23: Oh, gotta go. Parent over shoulder. Be right back.
GINNIE: Okay. See you later. Ta ta for now.
Integration (or at least cohabitation) between the PC/Internet and TV is already happening in the U.S. About one in five TV-owning households are online (via a PC or other device) and watching TV in the same room, according to research by Paul Kagan Associates, Morris says.
"Television viewers used to be passive, but all the old assumptions about the media have to be questioned," Morris says. "There is a new generation [of viewers] that are very comfortable using multiple media and they want interactive, immersive, on-demand shows. The Web is moving beyond a companion media to an alternative media with a critical mass of viewers."
Resistance is Futile
"Convergence is inevitable," says Richard Gingras, vice president and editor-in-chief of Excite@Home Networks, owned by AT&T. Excite@Home offers high-speed cable access to the Internet, custom programming, and video clips from such familiar TV sources as CNN.
"Convergence doesn't mean you use the PC and TV for the same thing," Gingras adds. "The PC is a functional device you can use to pay your bills, something I would not want to do on my television with a set-top box."
Web content providers must bring personality to their programming to attract a mass audience, Gingras says. "You don't want to watch Seinfeld reruns on the Web, but chunks of content works very well," he says. For example, Excite@Home broadcasts Comedy Central routines over the Net.
Simplicity is also important. Too many technology companies, particularly in Silicon Valley, don't value simplicity when creating products and services for the mass market. "The Web to me is still primitive," Gringas says. "There's a lot of funky stuff there."
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