2000: Interactive Enhanced Television: A Historical and Critical Perspective

By Tracy Swedlow

This Whitepaper has been commissioned by the American Film Institute-Intel Enhanced Television Workshop for distribution to participants of its 2000 activities, and on its Web site. The purpose of the paper is to provide technical and historical background for the television and creative community who are not principally concerned with technical issues. Feedback on this paper may be sent to swedlow@itvt.com or to enhancedtv@afionline.org.

For further information about the Workshop and the topic, go to http://www.afionline.org or InteractiveTV Today [itvt] at http://www.itvt.com

INTRODUCTION

High speed networks; a digital device revolution; the promise of the digital signal; new set-top boxes, software and compression technologies; data broadcasting services - all are enabling the introduction of early-stage, broadband "interactiveTV" also called "enhanced" television platforms and services into homes and offices around the world. Without a doubt, many traditional and new media professionals are turning their attention in growing numbers to companies within the industry, to their technologies and to new content forms. A long time coming, "ITV", for the purpose of this paper, may just possibly reinvent our existing passive television viewing experience forever. In order to prepare for that revolutionary eventuality and participate in it, knowing the current state of the industry and the context in which it continues to emerge may help create a stronger and more well-informed technological, industrial, and creative community.

The Goals of this Whitepaper

This paper has been commissioned by the visionary and insightful leaders of the American Film Institute-Intel Enhanced TV workshop to provide members of the creative community with a context for ongoing discovery, training, and collaboration. Intel and the AFI believe that the creative community will make an enormous contribution to the evolution of this new medium. The hope is that content producers who are excited about developing new ITV programming and methods will use the information found here to improve their understanding of where these technologies and content forms have come from and where they are going.

The outline this paper takes beyond introduction begins with an overview of market forces and important changes that occured over the last year until the time of writing, the promise of the medium, lingering questions about whether ITV will amount to a real industry, and other questions about privacy, targeted advertising, and the integrity of content in this environment. The next section deals with how ITV elements can appear on the screen, the types of content and applications that will exist in this environment, the latest technologies, and a short inquiry into how ITV will pay for itself. The next section presents the origins of ITV through a historical evaluation. The following section provides a breakdown of currently available solutions and general interactive television terms. In the final section, we present important issues, such as privacy and "open" vs. "forced" access, which currently remain unresolved. At the very end, we include a few observations from professionals in the field concerning remaining challenges and risks.

Serious Changes Taking Place

Radical changes in corporate strategy and organization within the television industry have taken place over the last year. These changes will have a lasting impact on the evolution of television and the emergent interactive/enhanced TV industry. Some have been: a) telecommunications, cable, satellite, and software companies have been investing untold hundreds of millions even billions of dollars in new digital two-way networks (or, investing in cable and satellite companies, in the case of Microsoft) to ensure and own a piece of the broadband digital delivery of data, audio, video, and voice streams; b) three of the biggest corporate mergers (one still waiting for passage by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission) of the year, Gemstar-TV Guide at $9.4 billion (passed July, 2000), AT&T-MediaOne at $54 billion (passed July 2000), and America Online-Time Warner at $184 billion, clearly formed, at least in part, because of the enormous revenue-generating potential of broadband ITV media; c) companies, even within the ITV industry, have and are continuing to invest many millions of dollars in their rivals or those companies they believe have some technology or service to offer; d) Multiple System Operators (MSOs) have strongly begun to launch network trials, or in some cases, deploy commercial ITV network services into the market to test new technologies, content and the potential for "tcommerce" revenues. Lastly, more companies have begun to build divisions dedicated to broadband/ITV strategies in-house and aggressively hire new media professionals to lead them.

Due to such activity, investors, Wall Street and technology analysts, and the media are finally looking at ITV in a more concerted way without indulging themselves in the type of easy technology bashing that went on in the mid-90's. At that time, ITV failed to meet its promise (which we will talk about later), and was pronounced "dead." Today, Wall Street analysts, et al, are pronouncing ITV to be a serious business with a multi-billion dollar outlook even as soon as 2004.

Another big change is the fact that more people are participating in interactive activities in the same room as their television. Gartner, the research firm, recently published a statistic that claims over 44 million people use a personal computer and a television in the same room - up from 26 million last year. Gartner's research further says this number will grow to over 50+ million by the end of 2001.

Finally, it seems, viewers are becoming more aware of the existence of ITV than ever before. For example, viewers with WebTV and Liberate-enabled boxes (which we will speak about later) can now play-along with daily TV game shows like "To Tell the Truth", "Jeopardy", and "Wheel of Fortune.". Other recently deployed boxes, such as AOLTV, will soon offer this sort of programming when it enables enhanced programming later in the year. Cable networks, such as Time Warner in New York City, are in partnership with Wink Communications to offer their subscribers interactive ads and content data "enhancements" for certain networks like The Weather Channel and more. Viewers on the Web have access to synchronized TV and tcommerce applications during specific broadcasts such as Spiderdance’s webRIOT in association with MTV and ACTV's HyperTV with Liberty Livewire services in association with the Turner Broadcasting Service (TBS) on "Cyberbond: 15 Days of Bond." Another example of greater access and awareness of ITV services is the experience of Open in the United Kingdom. This service, offered by BSkyB to their digital satellite Sky subscribers, provides viewers with the click of a button on their remote, with a special channel featuring interactive home banking, grocery shopping, email, games, and other types of content. Open, of course, will also feature enhanced ITV capabilities (this is still an early and specific type of interactive TV where interface elements and data are sent through the TV signal and then overlaid on the video broadcast rather than integrated with it) in the near future. During the 1999 holiday season, Open reported over $1 million in tcommerce sales. Although this number has dropped since that time due to seasonal flux, subscribers continue to sign up for Sky Digital. This fact prompted BSkyB to increase their investment in Open to 80.1% in July 2000. A newly-introduced wireless Internet, graphicless browser called Sky Text will bring interactivity to the entire Sky Digital platform soon. And lastly, ITV services are popping up around the world in such places as Latin America, Europe, Australia, and, of course, Asia on various cable, satellite or even digital terrestrial systems. Much investment in that infrastructure is taking place. Overall, positive changes are happening around the world to enable this new medium, though not really on a mass scale…yet.

Copyright 2000 By the American Film Institute | Intel Corporation | Tracy Swedlow