The race for Interactive TV.................................................
newmedia.com
(Published in NewMedia February 10, 1998 Contents)
Interactive TV: The Sequel By Eric Brown
SIDEBARSInteractive WebTV
Who's Putting Interactive Into TV?
And Now a URL From Our Sponsors
Broadcasting
Between the Lines
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Tune into MTV, ESPN-2 and other channels aimed at Gen-X viewers, and you'll encounter status displays, banner ads, scrolling chat, pop-up trivia, news flashes and other Web-like screen chaos. Faced with competition from the Internet, TV is desperately trying to appear more interactive, but it's stymied by one simple problem: the only thing to click on is the next channel. <Picture>
ÿÿÿ<Picture>ÿÿ This is not exactly the way the titans of interactive TV described it back in the early '90s. Soon after the ITV hype explosion of '93, it became apparent that digital set-top boxes were too expensive, that cable infrastructure couldn't handle two-way digital communications, and that video servers were far too under-powered. Then the Web blew onto the scene, and the PC reasserted its role as the premiere portal to interactivity. Today, with DVD, cable modems, and cheap TV tuners coming on the market, there's an argument to be made that the PC is stealing viewers from the TV, not the other way around.
ÿÿÿ<Picture>ÿÿ And now the techies are going after the TV set itself.
ÿÿÿ<Picture>ÿÿ By the time cable companies maneuver their interactive TV offerings into place, they may find that more agile computer and consumer electronics companies have beaten them to the punch. For more than a year now, consumers have been able to navigate the Internet on their TVs with WebTV set-top boxes sold by Philips, Sony, and Mitsubishi. In 1997, Microsoft purchased WebTV Networks for $425 million, invested another half million or so, and pushed WebTV to ship the enhanced WebTV Plus version of the box by Christmas '97. (They barely hit the deadline, shipping only a small quantity of units.)
ÿÿÿ<Picture>ÿÿ Meanwhile, Sun Microsystems and Oracle are counting on Java-based Internet set-tops to be the featured players in an orchestra of networked home appliances. Only a handful of Net TV products were on the market by year's end, including WebTV and NetChannel; but according to Sean Kaldor, an analyst with International Data Corp. (IDC), more than 40 such solutions are ready to roll and looking for exposure (see the chart for some of the more high-profile efforts).
ÿÿÿ<Picture>ÿÿ All these efforts depend upon proprietary boxes that sit on top of the cable or satellite box and use standard modems for Internet access. But most of these companies are trying to convince the cable companies' multiple service operators (MSOs) to include their Net-access operating systems, services, and in some cases, hardware, in the new generation of digital set-tops due in 1998. In the case of Microsoft, this means cozying up to the television industry, both through alliances (as with NBC, Sony, and DirecTV) and direct investments in cable MSOs (it paid $1 billion in 1997 for 11.5 percent ownership of Comcast).
ÿÿÿ<Picture>ÿÿ Even if WebTV loses money in the short term, the product will position Microsoft for a later move into digital television. Microsoft plans to add its Windows CE operating system to the next version of WebTV as part of a long-range plan to convince cable companies to feature CE in their digital set-tops.
ÿÿÿ<Picture>ÿÿ But Microsoft may find the cable world inhospitable. "The cable companies are in the strong suit," says Kaldor. "Microsoft has to play with them. Microsoft may be able to twist the arms of the device manufacturers, but they can't quite twist the arm of the cable industry as a whole. They can't set up a new standard, because the cable standards and the Net protocols are already there."
ÿÿÿ<Picture>ÿÿ Microsoft's trump card is its initiative to datacast over the vertical blanking interval (VBI), a portion of the broadcast signal typically set aside for closed-captioning. The CE version of the WebTV box, due later in 1998, will probably include support for a technology called WaveTop, recently licensed from WavePhore, which uses IP Multi-casting to deliver data over VBI. WaveTop is also built into Windows 98, enabling computers equipped with TV tuners to download information along with TV programming. The problem with VBI is that it offers a relatively small (19.2Kbps) one-way bandwidth, and it can be legally blocked by cable companies. However, it's also available over broadcast and satellite, and it offers the advantage of synchronization. Because VBI is in sync with the TV signal, broadcasters can deliver real-time data to enhance their TV shows (see "Broadcasting Between the Lines").
<Picture: continued>Interactive TV: The Sequelÿ February 10, 1998 |
