Digital TV receives an early report card
By Emory Thomas Jr., MSNBC
March 12, 1998 2:52 AM PST
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What will consumers ultimately want from interactive TV? Will e-mail be the most popular feature? How about video-on-demand, or games, or Web browsing? Strangely, no one in the television industry seems to know. For answers, MSNBC goes directly to the experts - the consumers themselves.
The companies "don't know who's going to use it or who's going to buy it," says Forrester Research analyst Tom Rilander of the broadcasters, cable operators, electronics makers and others who are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to bring digital TV technology, and thus interactive TV, to the masses. <Picture>
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What's your opinion of digital TV? Will you subscribe? Add your comments to the bottom of this page. <Picture>
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On several different fronts, the television industry is spending lavishly to convert from age-old analogue systems. Most of the resulting service enhancements will require TV viewers either to buy or upgrade TV set-top boxes, or to purchase new digital TV sets. Delivery of digital TV services already is under way in certain pockets of the country, but the transition will pick up speed late this year, when many major programmers have said they'll begin sending digital signals.
In the meantime, thousands of viewers across the country are taking part in experiments that feature digital TV services such as video-on-demand, e-mail, Web browsing and interactive-game playing.
MSNBC spoke to three consumers testing three different services. Here's what they had to say.
Customer: Bryant Christensen, pest-control technician.
Service: ICTV. Provided via cable and a wallet-sized set-top device. Requires a phone-line hook-up as well. Features include e-mail, Web browsing, CD-ROM games, and more.
Price: $6.95 a month. First five hours free. Each additional hour costs $2 in prime time, $1 during off-hours. (Flat monthly rates are on the way.)
Christensen had gotten more than a little tired of hearing about the Internet and never seeing it. So when he got a brochure in the mail about ICTV, an interactive-TV service offered experimentally through Cox Cable, Christensen was ready to jump. But he was skeptical.
"I was looking for the fine print, you know," wondering "where's the catch," he recalls. After some due diligence, Christensen figured, "Cool, I always like being on the cutting edge with technology." So he signed up.
That was a year ago. And at first, Christensen and his wife and 10-year-old son spent hours on ICTV simply surfing the Web. "I really got into it heavily at first," he recalls.
But after a couple months, the novelty wore off, and the Christensen family tapered its usage. Monthly ICTV bills that had crept as high as $25 now settled down near the minimum $6.95. Christensen says he still checked his e-mail frequently, but rarely used the service for its other features.
Games abound
Games, for instance, are plentiful on ICTV, and he and his son had been enthused about playing some brand-name titles. But the ICTV hardware limits the fun, Christensen says, because the on-screen action is controlled by a wireless keyboard with a tiny joystick mouse. Pressing arrows and manipulating the tiny mouse, Christensen says, isn't exactly conducive to exciting game play.
As a result, Christensen's son now plays most of his games on a Nintendo 64, which comes with a custom hand-held controller.
In recent weeks, Internet usage by the Christensen family has begun to rise again. The Web, for instance, recently had plenty of data to offer in the preparation of a school report on the Olympics. Meanwhile, e-mail remains highly popular. Each member of the family has a separate password, and Christensen says they constantly monitor ICTV's electronic mailbox.
"Without e-mail, it would really lose its appeal," he says.
Is this interactive-TV service worth it?
Without hesitation, Christensen says yes. "It has certainly given me what I wanted, and I haven't had to go out and spend $1,500 for a new computer ... If we can keep it under $20 a month [the typical price for online computer service], then we're ahead of the game."
Customer: John Michaylo, engineer in Fullerton, Calif.
Service: Intertainer. Provided via cable to personal computers (and soon to TV set-top boxes). Requires video card, ethernet card, other computer components. Launches from Windows icon. Provides movies-on-demand, games, music, online shopping and more.
Price: Free for now. Michaylo pays nothing during early test phase. Movies are expected to cost between $1 and $3 each.
As a designer for in-flight entertainment systems for airlines, Michaylo was more than happy to be a beta tester for Comcast's Intertainer cable service. The call came only a month ago, but already Michaylo has drawn some conclusions about interactive TV.
To begin with, he says, interface is everything. And it's here that Intertainer stumbles a bit, he claims.
Intertainer provides a compass-shaped menu that guides users through its extremely wide range of entertainment options.
Many choices
Click on the word "music" and you're asked to choose a genre - country, rock, jazz, etc. Click on the word "rock" and you're offered specific choices. Click again and a song starts playing.
It's a tidy organizational tool. But it's simply too tedious for navigating from across the room, according to Michaylo. So unless the viewer is leaning only a foot or so away from the screen, the items are too small to read.
Despite the interface weaknesses, though, Michaylo says the services themselves are excellent. Movies, for instance, begin instantly on cue. And unlike standard pay-per-view shows delivered by, say, satellite, the user can press buttons to pause, rewind or fast-forward the film.
Michaylo has watched several movies over the past month, putting the system through as many stop-and-start tests as he can think of. So far, no glitches have emerged. "The network has never gone down, and the computer has never crashed," he says.
To date, only a handful of Intertainer's many services actually are up and running. Games and online shopping, for instance, aren't available yet, he says.
But Michaylo says the movies and music are likely the only services he would use anyway. "I have no desire to do any online shopping," he proclaims. "I like to hold [the merchandise] in my hand ... I will not give out a credit card number over the Internet."
When Intertainer launches in earnest, Michaylo says he probably will sign up - as long as the movie prices match those at Blockbuster and the online connection cost doesn't exceed that of basic cable-modem service providers.
Customer: Michele Wright, acquisition analyst for a funeral home operator.
Service: OnSet. Provided through cable TV by Diva Systems via a set-top box. Offers mainly movies-on-demand.
Price: $5.95 a month for the service. $3.95 for each recent-release movie.
Movie buff
Wright, a self-described movie buff, was a prime target for Suburban Cable's telemarketing pitch. A subscriber to HBO, Showtime, Cinemax and other movie channels, she was intrigued at the prospect of gaining instant access to contemporary films via her cable box at home, so she signed up last fall.
Ever since some early snafus (some movies would blip out with no warning) were addressed, Wright and her husband have been watching at least one film a week through the so-called OnSet service.
Does it beat the basic video-store experience? Yes and no. It's nice not having to leave home to retrieve the movie, and there are never any late fees.
But the selection can be limited. Scores of titles are available at any one time, but they're constantly rotating. That means "Air Force One" may be available in February but not in March. As a result, OnSet fails to replace the local Blockbuster entirely. In fact, just last weekend, Wright and her husband went out and rented three flicks from Blockbuster because they weren't available at home.
Still, Wright says she's pleased with the service and will stick with it. In fact, she is so pleased that she cancelled her other premium cable services - saving her about $25 a month.
That, of course, is a mixed blessing for the cable company. |
