CUBE seems to like Mondays lately. Hoping for the best. Here is a piece on MSFTs WebTV and WebDVD. When I read it I was keeping that DVx chip on my mind...........
emediapro.net
We interrupt our regularly scheduled programming for this important announcement: the
Webnoscenti have determined the killer app of the Internet. (Drumroll, please.) It's--ta-da!--email.
According to Yahoo!, 97 percent of Internet users correspond by email. Georgia Tech's eighth
Internet user survey reports that 84 percent of Internet users say they can't live without their email.
And according to CommerceNet/Nielsen Media Research, 30 million people used email in the past
24 hours--including four million who are not regular Internet users. And the number one reason why
most people become wired is to stay in touch with relatives via email.
All of which makes sense. I'll let phone messages languish in voice mail for days; leave snail mail
unopened in a pile for a week, and pick up my faxes only when someone has informed me via email
that one was sent. This, of course, is very annoying to those who still communicate mainly by phone,
fax, or snail mail--and it seems like a huge inconvenience to me to be forced to respond in kind.
When this happens--less and less often these days--what runs through my mind is a variation of the
old pitch for deodorant soap: "Aren't you glad you use email? Don't you wish everybody did?"
One of these hopelessly unplugged and annoyed people--perhaps the most annoyed-- is my mother.
I think it would be great for Mom to be able to do email, but not if it means that she has to learn to
use a computer, and certainly not if she has to learn to use Windows. I wouldn't wish that on my
worst non-technical enemy. I've been thinking of getting Mom a WebTV, the dedicated Internet
appliance that lets users access the Web and send and receive email via their television sets.
WebTV is one consumer set-top box that lives up to its billing--it's easy, but not dumb, cheap, but
not cheesy, and appealing to a broad demographic. For as little as about $100 (after rebate), and
$20 a month, anyone with a television set and a phone line can be wired within 15 minutes. Not only
were there some 400,000 users of WebTV last spring, and two million expected by year end 1998,
there are Web publications expressly designed for this growing community. One of them, Net4TV,
published by CD-ROM pioneer Laura Buddine of Iacta, notes a most fascinating and
little-understood phenomenon--what she calls "real people on the other side of the screen," not just
passively consuming or minimally interacting with television, but talking to each other and publishing
their own content. It's a small step, after all, from using email to creating a homepage.
AN IDEA WHOSE TIME HAS COME?
WebTV is a specification created by a Mountain View, California-based corporation called WebTV
Networks, Inc., which operates as a subsidiary of Microsoft. The spec is licensed by consumer
electronics manufacturers--currently, Sony, Philips, Mitsubishi, and Samsung--to build boxes that
will let users easily connect to WebTV's proprietary Internet hosting service.
Microsoft has big plans for WebTV. Since paying $450 million in cash and stock to use WebTV
Networks last October, Microsoft has announced long-range plans to use WebTV to deliver the
Windows CE operating system into the 60 percent of American homes with no PC. Last April,
Microsoft announced plans to add "Internet-enhanced" features to television programming--clickable
areas on the TV picture that connect the user to related Web content. Microsoft's digital TV goal is
to have a box that lets the user ask for additional information on any program, sports stats during
game time, purchasing information during commercials, and background on TV shows, all with the
click of the remote control.
WEBDVD: CONVERGENCE LOOKING FOR A PLACE TO HAPPEN?
Due for Christmas 1998 release, according to InfoWorld, is an Internet-connected DVD settop
currently code-named WebDVD. InfoWorld reports, "Microsoft's plan calls for such a device to be
priced at about $100 more than a standalone DVD player will cost at that time."
The Web/TV/DVD device (or disc) is too great an idea for it to have occurred to only one
company. Sure enough, Time Warner has its own version of WebDVD, a DVD-ROM disc that
includes as much as a season's worth of a television program, and unlocks one episode at a time
when the user logs into a Warner Web site from a DVD-PC.
Meanwhile, it seems every heavyweight in the computer industry--Intel, Sun, and Oracle/ Netscape,
to name a few--has some form of Web-connected television device or format in the works. That's
not even counting the other major players in the TV/Web revolution--the cable Multiple System
Operators (MSOs) and the telephone companies. What each of these participants has in mind is
tapping into the 98 percent of American households with a television and a telephone line.
The ultimate outcome, in this case, is not the format war to end all format wars, but the end of the
mass market as we know it. Combine an inexpensive, easy-to-use appliance with Web access and a
television screen, and you've got the foundation for two-way communication between content
providers--and advertisers--and what were formerly only passive content receivers. Throw in a
DVD-Video/ROM drive, and the televisions of America and the world become open to almost
anyone with a yen to place their visions in front of an audience. The important thing is that the
audience will be talking back.
And perhaps most important of all--Mom will have email. |
