Focus 580; TV Dot Com: The Future of Interactive Television

Good morning this is Focus 580 our morning telephone talk show My name is Jack Brighton. You could listen today. For years Americans have grown accustomed to a steady patter of hype about how technology will transform our lives. In view of the many failed predictions it's easy to be cynical especially in light of the commercial motivations of the hypers but cynical about it or not the revolution has already been televised. Moore's Law provides a measure of the expanding wave of change taking place throughout our economy in our culture. And that wave is composed of ones and zeroes. Digital technology enables us to do an amazing number of things better faster and cheaper. And the digital wave hasn't even begun to crest. During this our focus 580 will look at how the future of television like so many other things will be transformed by digital technology and we'll look at how the digital transformation of television will affect the way we work and live. Our guest is someone who's been working in the field for some 20 years. Philip Swann is the founder of TV online the first magazine devoted to interactive television. He's a former editor and publisher of satellite direct and is currently the editor of the Sony

Style dot com swamis author also the author of the book. Dot com the future of interactive television just published by TV books. In his book he describes some of the new technologies being put in place right now and how he believes they will play out in the millions of homes where interactive TV will be installed within the next five to 10 years. We'll talk with Philip Swan And also welcome your calls during this hour if you'd like to join the conversation you can call us around Champaign-Urbana at 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 That's 3 3 3 W I L L. If that makes it easier for you to dial. We also have a toll free line. Good anywhere you hear us around Illinois Indiana parts of the other states where a circle travels 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5. Again around Champaign-Urbana 3 3 3 W I L L toll free elsewhere. Eight hundred to two to oil. Philip Swan Good morning good morning. You said it very very well what's happening with all the stuff with digital technology and

how it's expanding the possibilities. That's pretty much what my books all about right. So well that was a great set up. Well thank. Well let me just ask there's been a lot of arguing about personal computers the Internet and television and some people have said PCs will replace TVs as the central medium of home entertainment but you think the TV will win that particular battle. It really will and the reason it will is that the PC right now is in roughly 35 40 percent of homes and the TV obviously is at 100 percent. And so consequently the people behind the new features programs etc. that are on the PC currently are looking to put them on the television and again with the advances in digital technology they're going to be able to do that. And so that's why the TV is going to supersede the PC even more so as a dominant product in the household. Well what will interactive television look like what will it do for us. You know interactive TV is going to be a number of things I think people are very confused by what it means but basically it means everything that enhances what you currently have on your

TV. Basically what we have now is you know if you have satellite 200 300 channels or a digital cable box but if you just have regular cable you have maybe 50 60 channels. Well it's going to credible change over the next few years and in fact some of those changes are already taking place. They're going to be able to have three or four hundred channels. You're going to be able to surf the Internet on your TV. You can really get your e-mail on TV you're going to be able to use the personal recorder features which you've been hearing about from people like TiVo and replay. That will enable you to pause live programming record up to 60 hours of programming so you can throw your VCR away and you're either going to be able to play video games on your TV via the net. You know in theory you could play with somebody 3000 miles away. This is all stuff that's coming about as a result of broadband and increasing bandwidth on the networks. The companies are installing You know a broadband is a big factor in the development of

interactive TV. But indeed it's been the advances in technology over the last three to five years that is currently driving it. Broadband is going to be the holy grail of interactive TV though because with broadband people are going to be able to have high speed two way connections on their television. And for those of you out there who currently have an on your cable system you know how that how that makes the Internet much more of a pleasure a much more enjoyable and interesting experience. We're going to be able to do that on your television and so consequently you not only are going to have all of those features I just described that they're actually being added to many TV sets and set top boxes now and even more so in the next year or two. But you're going to be able to when you surf the net on your television to be able to go to websites that do video streaming and so consequently you're not only going to have those three or four hundred channels your cable or satellite you're going to have access to even hundreds more channels and perhaps thousands by going to different websites and seeing video streaming on your TV.

So the interactive part of it is what that exactly I mean you're obviously you're getting a stream of video coming at you whether it's you know a movie or a news program and so forth. And how is the user interacting with the stream. You know the way it works. Well word Jack is that you'll be sitting there at let's picture it is two three years from now and broadband has been added to your television via your cable box or your satellite box and you'll have your normal lineup of television channels which on again on a digital cable satellite boxes now around 300 or more. But what you can be able to do is you're going to have the feature on that box set on able you to surf the Internet. And so consequently you'll be able to go to let's say a Web site called icebox dot com it's currently doing a number of video streaming animated shows. You'll be able to watch that on your television. So what is it going to do. You know what this is going to do. It's going to really open the door to a lot of niche programming and there will be a bore or

a blending of shows and programs and themes that are currently available on the web and those are available on television to the point the viewer won't really know the difference. Video will be video and the viewer will simply want to know it will watch what the subject or the program or whatever it may be that the viewer wants to watch. So the Internet essentially interfaces with the traditional traditional notions of the television networks in some technological way correct. Exactly. And that's why you see many of the websites out there that are gearing up for this. They have very strong broadband programs and many people who are not very familiar with this topic are wondering why because. Theoretically at this point you go gee not many people have broadband However in the next two or three years Forrester Research is predicting that as many as 30 million Americans will have broadband at home. And so these websites are gearing up their or their broadband and webcasting video streaming features on their websites and even the

networks are doing at NBC as a leader in that. And the reason they're doing it is that they know that this is going to be available on television. And so when it is available they want to be ready. So when viewers sit down inside what to watch. It's not just where they decide to watch it could be where they decide to watch when they surf. So yeah it's going to basically create a lot more competition for the for the current network channels. In terms of the way we use these devices computers until versions and so forth. You feel that the television is better suited to our sort of habits in terms of entertainment in the way we consume this this type of media. Then the in the PC. Absolutely. You know it's a psychological thing because you know we go to work and most of us use a PC at work or at least at some point during the day. And so consequently we associate the PC with work related functions. It could be a spreadsheet it could be word processing whatever it is it's usually somewhat work

related. However there are certainly entertainment features of the PC that are there that we use and we only use them on the PC because that's the only place we can actually access them. However the television is associated psychologically with entertainment and relaxation. And so when you come home a lot of people will go on the PC but most people feel more comfortable turning their television on and relaxing and kind of zoning out. Well but can the people who are providing the entertainment games and features and other things on the PC are going. If we can just move this over to the television where people are much more inclined to relax and to enjoy entertainment they'll be an even greater experience among viewers and users In addition more people will want to use them because it is on the box of television that people associate with entertainment relaxation. And you think that that's where the industry is headed that this is the thinking of the corporations that are is essentially rolling this stuff out.

Well I tell you what the best example of the changes trend changes Microsoft. Microsoft obviously once upon a time was the Territorial Guard of the PC and everything on the PC. Even up to about five years ago even up to about five years ago you would hear Bill Gates and other Microsoft officials discount the television and its ability to to use PC features and so forth. Well they've developed things something over the years called Microsoft TV and they're investing very heavily in time money and resources in developing Microsoft because they now acknowledge that you can only get so many more PCs in homes. Plus you can only get people to use the PC so much in the home but they know the television is where it's sat and people use that constantly during the day and week and so forth. And so they're looking to move a lot of the things they currently have on the PC over on the TI the web tv being a sort of precursor to the more. Fully developed kind of service

absolutely correct web TV has been pretty much their laboratory. They have about 1 million customers with Web TV. Many people have said gee that's not many considering they've been out now for about four years you know it actually isn't that many but Microsoft has really never promoted it or marketed as a mass product. And there's all kinds of reasons for that but one of them is that they see that as a laboratory they're learning from Web TV. They're seeing how customers react what they want what they don't want. And so they're now taking in information and they're putting it in new products which they have a new one coming out early next year called alternate TV which is even more of an interactive TV box. It's going to have a personal video recorder in the box. Net surfing capability hundreds of channels brought to you by DirecTV and some other personal TV features. So yeah they they are indeed a leader in this but I tell you what the real leader of the guys who are going to really make this go is America Online and Time Warner.

How so. Well you know she almost a year ago now America Online Time Warner announced its merger. Right. And when the history of interactive TV is written that'll be the day that interactive TV get put on the map. And the reason it did is that the industry really got a wake up call from this merger because AOL's got now 26 million customers. Time-Warner has this incredible stable of entertainment entities and publishing entities and so forth by combining the two they can create an interactive TV product that is perhaps irresistible and perhaps maybe tough to beat and maybe won't be beat for some time to come in interactive television. And it's a top priority in their agenda to provide interactive TV products in the marketplace. And so the industry saw this developing and they saw the merger and so now all the other industry giants Microsoft the Sony's and all the others now they're they're doubling their resources and budgets on interactive TV programs. So the

merger is driving the industry to move faster. And so consequently this is going to happen much sooner than some people earlier predicted. Of course Time Warner also owned owns cable systems and so forth. Absolutely and they have such a great. It is it's if you were going to draw on a piece of paper what would be the best ingredients of an interactive TV company. It would be the ingredients that are provided by the merger of AOL and Time Warner. Let me ask you talk a bit about personal video recorders and their implications these are devices that are already on the market as you mentioned replay and TiVo that some people may be familiar with may have them that you know sitting on top of their television set. But they're going to become much more universal. You know they really are in my chapter in TV dot com. I have a chapter entitled Let's not go to the videotape in the reason that is for those who are not familiar with the personal video recorders. It is basically a VCR without tape. You don't use tape it's a hard drive inside the receiver it looks much like a VCR but it's simply a hard

drive in there. Much like your cable set top box or satellite box and what it can do is it can record some of the most recent models can do that up to 16 hours of programming. That's incredible. Most PC ours might get you up to six or eight but this thing will get the 60 and now increase further. It will do everything from you know pause live programming. So let's say you are watching a bar game and you get a phone call you could hit the pause button of the game take your phone call come back to the game and hit another button and it picks up exactly where you left off it's incredibly convenient. You can skip through commercials. So when you come back to the ball game if it's progressed so the commercial during a timeout you hit a few buttons and you skip right over the commercials. It's incredibly convenient. So all these great convenience features basically taking something we all use. Most people use the VCR and making it even more convenient entertaining is going to really make the personal video recorder a big success story of interactive TV.

TiVo and replay have been at about a year now. Combined they might have about 200000 households right now. But 2001 is the year where I think it's really going to happen. I think a lot of folks are getting it for Christmas and I know my parents they would hope you're not listening to Marie. And they're a perfect example of somebody who could use it really well because you know it's the reply and Tivo are also very easy to program. It's basically a one click recording. Unlike the VCR where you have to program all these different things using the reply in the Tivo you simply go to the listings for that day or for the next two weeks. And you click on the show that you want and they'll say do you want to record this and you click again and it's recording or you're with so and it's all on the screen. So absolutely it's all on screen prompts and it's extremely easy to use. All these conveniences and all these great entertainment features of a personal video recorders they are going to be a big hit coming down in price. And I think

people are just going to love them. It's likely that the cable companies AT&T and the others are going to be probably providing devices set top boxes that have you know both the tuning features and the recording features and yeah they absolutely are and actually AT&T is doing some testing in different cities around the country right now where they are offering TiVo discounts to their customers with the Tivo set top box. But where it's really happening is that all these features are going to be in one box. And I think that's what customers want I think we're all tired of those boxes stacking up here a ceiling you know could be a DVD player a VCR a cable box and God knows maybe a Playstation and various other things and people are tired of that. They want convenience they want these things in one box. And the industry is responding to that and so there are some of the early products such as the Echostar Dish player which people may have heard of. It's got a personal video recorder downloadable video games hundreds of channels etc.. That's

where the industry is heading to put all these features in one box. Yeah the personal video recorder is the features of that you are going to be in just simply the one box with everything else you have. There is a we have a call to say I'll get to them in just a second but there is one other question I wanted to raise that seems pretty important and that is once people start using personal video recorders it's just like a VCR only you can you know when you're watching something live as you say you get a phone call you can pause it when you come back you can resume right where you left off. It'll keep recording and it'll just play back the part that you haven't seen yet. Right. You can skip through commercials. And what this means to me is someone who generally doesn't like commercials is that I never really have to watch a commercial again in my entire life. You're really down and you know what the advertisers are obviously quite aware of and they've been taking steps to ensure that they'll still get their advertising message messages delivered to you and one of the ways that's going to happen is that you're also going to be able to do interactive shopping on your television and one of the things that's been hotly debated but gets

people very excited is that you're going to able to watch programs like say Ali McBeal and let's say Ellen appeal comes and she's wearing a certain skirt or whatever. You might get a little icon if you like that skirt you can buy it. Or some other product related to the show. And you can be able to do that with one click. So you know I could you go and certainly envision a scenario where you have Allie McBeal and Fox going to Kmart let's say and say you know what we're going to have the entire cast of al in the deal where it came our clothing. It's a great advertisement for Kmart. It's a great deal for it to be a concern to get certain revenue from the purchases plus the other thing that it's got going is that you know what the advertiser if they do a commercial for Kmart a person has to leave the shopping mall go to Kmart and buy it. Well with one click shopping if they want to buy an Ally McBeal skirt or Kmart one click and they've done it. So what a great deal for the advertisers. Well I definitely want to follow up with some more questions about that. I have a caller that I want to include before I make them

wait too long right. Also shouldn't reintroduce our guest we're talking during this hour focus 580 with Philip Swann about his book TV dot com the future of interactive television. Recently published by TV books. We have one listener waiting with welcome others if you want to join us around Champaign-Urbana 3 3 3 9 4 5 5. Toll free anywhere you hear is 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5. Let's talk with a listener in Champaign on line number 1. Good morning you're in focus 580. And you know Jack you're reading my mind because you asked the very question I was going to sorry about that. Great. You know you can get rid of these commercials but yeah it seems like the Time Warner at all are going to be you know very unhappy about people not you know make it harder for them to sell advertising but you're suggesting that they'll just do it in other ways. Absolutely they sure well they you know these are creative people and they've known this has been coming for some time so they've been really changing their whole model in their programs of the ensure that those messages are going to get to people and they're also

looking to take advantage of these features they see this now as a way to increase their sales rather than decrease. So they're getting ready for it and so yeah you want to see maybe the traditional commercial although I predict in a book TV dot.com that some people will still want to watch the commercials because you know one of the most watched features during Super Bowl of course are commercials. And the reason that is is that they're done so well. Very entertaining. And I think that the reason that people do that the advertisers do that is that they know that the Super Bowl is the kind of play time that's a special event and they don't want people walking away during timeouts and so they really do a special commercial Well if they know people can skip through commercials they're going to make those commercials more entertaining to ensure that people don't do that. So you're going to see more of that but you know I think you're going to see fewer 30 second 15 second 60 second term Hershel's on television. But you're going to see more advertising messages in various places such as in programs themselves or the electronic

programming guide which is going to be available in your set top box and you control your TV guide the way you'll be able to have TV Guide right there on your screen. Some of those Super Bowl commercials are awfully expensive to produce not just to buy the time on. They really are and I don't think they necessarily have to be expensive to be entertaining. I think that you know certainly there's a lot of great cases where people have done entertaining commercials relatively on the cheap and I think it simply is a matter of creativity. And so I think you'll see companies doing more but I think that they'll do simply fewer commercials but the ones that they do will put more money into it they'll simply instead of spending you know so much on the hundred commercials they'll spend a lot on 10 commercials. Cause I don't have to watch a more Old Navy commercials where you can program those out I guess. Sure OK thanks for the call we have another listener waiting we'll go to next. In Indianapolis on line number four. Good morning you're in focus 580. Good morning.

Yes no question about HDTV. You're going to Annapolis they have a couple of stations I went to the local electronics store and they kind of gave a demonstration but they said really no the programming is really truly an HDTV right now that is kind of simulcast on some of their extra channels. When is it going to be widespread enough to actually be producing shows an HDTV. It's a great question because we have heard so much about HDTV over the last few years and anyone out there who's seen it you do a double take because the picture is so clear it's extraordinary However HDTV takes up a lot of bandwidth. And now the cable companies and satellite companies have the ability to use that bandwidth for all these interactive features as we previously described many of them are revenue producers. There are much less prone and inclined to provide the bandwidth for HD TV. So HDTV has been taken a backseat to all of this interactivity. That's got the attention a lot of people in Washington and Congress who gave the broadcasters

extra bandwidth to provide digital TV and so forth. But the cable people in the broadcast people are basically all but ignoring HDTV. They're doing a limited amount of programming the Jay Leno Show for example is an HDTV. But by and large has very little programming out there and they will continue to be that way for some time because it's not a big revenue producer for the broadcast networks or for the cable companies like you. All right thanks very much for the call. We're better mid-point with the Philips one he has for a long time been involved in both the television in the computer industry he's a founder of TV online and his written a great deal about these subjects including the book we're discussing during this hour TV dot com the future of it. Active television we have plenty of time left if you'd like to join the conversation. Three three three W I L L around Champaign-Urbana elsewhere. Eight hundred two two two. Well I'm

still a little bit incredulous about this idea of the changing of the advertising model because it has been the basis of commercial television really since almost since the beginning of broadcasting I think. You know radio initially was almost commercial free and it was considered very scandalous to start having advertising on on the air and radio but once it started it was very quickly accepted. And when television began obviously it became the model of supporting you know the whole. The cost of broadcasting and people in the industry are seriously considering dropping that is the economic basis of broadcasting. They're looking at a very seriously because they were waiting to see how customers are going to react on a mass basis. You know all of this but the initial testing is showing that people are skipping commercials because they have the ability to do that. I think what

you're going to see again you're going to get advertising messages. They're simply going to be coming at you in different ways that you've been used to. But I think even with commercials again going back to the concept of making commercials more entertaining and giving them people reason to watch them I think you'll see something like at the end of the let's say a program right towards the end often let's say NBC or CBS or whatever the network is will do a little promo for a show that's coming up. They might say well you know tune in next for friends or whatever it may be. Well I think if the commercial is entertaining enough let's say Michael Jackson was going to be on a Pepsi commercial. I think that at the end of the French show it Pepsi would have a deal with NBC and they would say. Coming up next Michael Jackson you know with talk about Pepsi. So then people will go well maybe I won't skip over this one. So yeah again there will still be commercials. They'll be fewer of them. People will watch fewer than commercials but the bigger picture is that the advertising messages are going to come at you just simply in different

ways right. And those commercials that do air will be more like features in themselves. Correct. Yeah exactly him. Well with the proliferation of channels today Univision something like a commercial channel you know it's not a bad idea because there are people out there who like commercials because the information it contains or perhaps they are entertaining. And with broadband and the ability to do with video streaming on hundreds of channels you certainly can see a webcast channel that just does nothing but commercials. Aside from the commercials themselves this new idea or maybe it's you know being tested in markets and so forth. I don't know what research is being done on this but the idea of being able to buy elling that deal McBeal skirt. Well the. We look like on these. Yeah the way it'll look is you know there's actually a company now that is taking several steps in that direction it's called Wink and wink is available in a number of cable systems it's going to be available in DirecTV very soon.

And what way it works is that you'll be watching whatever program is your friends whatever and a little I will just appear in the right hand corner of your screen like almost literally winking at you and you'll hit your remote and some action will take place it might be say something like you want to learn more about who you are. Do you want to learn more about friends or whatever it may be well in the near future you'll click on the. And I'll say do you want to buy something related to whatever you're watching. So it's a really seamless way of getting information to the viewer and allowing them to make a decision. I'm kind of buying decision. It may simply be do you want to get a you know some kind of discount coupon on this product in the mail or it might be do you want to get a brochure about this product or. Whatever it may be so it's not necessarily always going to be a hard sell but it's going to be very very seamless and the screen is just going to appear in the corner. Click on it and then they'll be a little line at the bottom of the screen really obscuring the program at all. You know just

simply ask you something and you'll go yes no whatever you can ignore it you can do whatever you want with it and it's as simple as that. Now presuming that you're buying say a pair of shoes or something as a result of this interactive process there would be some way for your shoe size to be a part of the information that goes back to wherever it is that is going to ship you the shoes. Correct. Exactly. And it does when you sign on to one of these interactive TV services they will get the basic demographic and personal information that they need including a credit card number and so forth that allow you to have one click shopping very very similar to what now goes on websites. So when they say do you want to buy Ali McBeal skirt. They already have your size your clothing size for it you can adjust at any given time depending upon whether the holiday season if you had so much to eat but yeah so they'll have that kind of information or you can get at it. So you don't have to you know spend a lot of time filling out every form every time you order something.

So we'll have like a personal profile based on information that you provide. Exactly. We have a couple calls it's to talk with and I'll get right to them but this obviously raises a number of concerns about privacy. Most certainly does. Yeah I tell you why it's in my last chapter in TV. It's intitled television is watching all right and it's a very interesting twist to all of this. All these features are very Cole people in the early period of early testing of these things a lot of it is going to go critical mass all experts are predicting that because it makes our lives more convenient or taining However when you have one set top that's basically recording almost everything we do you're talking about recording what shows we watch what websites we go to what we purchased what you know we got you're going to have the ability in several years from now to have video phones your television your phone service in there as well so you're going to have basically one product from the recording all of those. It's going to go basically to one

company. Maybe a cable coming out of the salad company and they're going to record this information which they might be able to use you know for advertising or marketing. So a lot of people are already looking at this. If you mean going CI do I want one company having that kind of information stored in a database somewhere. Now all the websites and everybody always says well gee this never gets out of the vault you know we protect it we never use it for advertising purposes it's anonymous and all the rest and there's certainly ninety nine point nine percent of the cases that's true but I think the issue of privacy is one that's growing in our country. People were deathly more concerned I think it's going to be a big issue in the 2004 presidential. And so will people go out she happy about that. So I think that the TV the interactive TV providers are going to have that we have real strong assurances to customers that this will be protected. We have two people waiting let's talk with our next listener This is someone in her band on line number one. Good morning you're on focus 580 Hello. Yes it's you.

Yeah my question was you know this computer saying if you have a different kind of money does. Sure you kind of bring the functionality if they continued browsing through that. Have to change money to start a sport. Yeah with the new model of TVs digital TVs you're going to get the same kind of precise clarity and surfing the net that you currently do on a PC. And in fact there are already products out there where you can surf the noun TV Web TV It is one of the AOL TVs and other say yeah you're going to be able to do your browsing on television just as you do a piece. So take the money exactly the same as the computer monitor then they got it cheap right now the TV is your TV. It's you. You'll be able to do these features on your television your current television screen or the resolution right now on television is not as high as it is not as good but what web tv and AOL TV does is that they actually

reconfigure websites so that it looks good on television. And that's been one of the things that I think a lot of people have been confused about the Goji PCs are better moderates more precise and clear and everything else well with interactive TV products they actually do the you know the changes on the website so that they're TV friendly. OK thank you. Welcome. Thanks for the call. Well is it also likely that in the future TV monitors will be higher resolution as the Internet. Exactly with digital TV. That's when that won't be required to be reconfiguring websites and so forth and again that's not something the customer obviously have to do the reconfiguring that's done in the back shop by the companies but yeah with digital TVs the picture is going to be clearer the picture the screen is going to be bigger and I think when we start thinking about several years when screens get much bigger and clear I think you might start to see a certain kind of Windows feature going

on television where you might have two or three channels up on the street the same time and in another window you might have a website or your email. We're very good Our lungs are all full so let's go on. As many people as we can for in a time we'll go next to a listener in Chicago on line number four. Good morning and focus 580. Thank you. MIT and University of California recently received a grant to do something about the electoral processing. Yeah when some of the uproar on the bottle that we went through makes your notions of interactive TV something that might be considered in the future as being instrumental to facilitate more easier a voting process and individual things that were going on all over the country and standardizing things you think we may see something like that. Yeah it's a really good question and the Frank once group Frank Luntz is a Republican pollster does focus groups was on MSNBC quite a bit during the election debate. He has actually done a study of

late that showed that there was kind of divided opinion on whether people would be comfortable with this. But there was a good number of folks as I recall in the survey who said if you could do it through your television some kind of interactive TV future people would like that. And it certainly would make things easier and it certainly also would put bring a certain uniformity to the voting process. I think here everybody would vote at a certain time where they could vote on a certain time right there on their television would be recorded instantaneously there wouldn't be any questions about hanging chads or anything like that. So it's certainly somebody it's something that people are looking at real closely and the technology advances and people make sure these things are secure. It could happen. I want to. On to other callers here in a second but there's one question that I wanted to get to or make sure but we get to before we go to time and that is how will interactive TV deal with News and Public Affairs will consumers that is citizens have more and better choices will it be good for us as participants in democracy in

community life. Yeah and I think again the what we're just talking about the possibility of audio and interactive TV as an example but I think it's really exciting what can happen with news and public affairs with interactive TV because it's going to open the doors of so many more channels both the traditional channels or television and the web casting. And if you have a specific interest it may be interactive TV you'll be able to go to a website and you'll be able to see video streaming only about interactive TV. Or it might be something about your local community or it might be something about health care and so forth so people are going to have access to one click access to pretty much every subject that they want and not just with type untaxed but also with video so it really is going to expand the mind I think it's going to make people there what their curiosity and get people more interested in various subjects. So it's really good I think for the news and public affairs people. Well I may follow up on that but I will defer to some callers and we'll go on next to a listener

in Sycamore on line number two. Good morning on focus 580. Good morning. I been interested in what. Talking about the last little while and I've had my own concerns that HDTV at least is going to be a kind of a hard sell with the general public because the resolution that I understand Steve offers over conventional TV is about double which is certainly but it doesn't knock your socks off what I've seen looks good but it's not astoundingly better than what's currently available at its best. And then I go think about what people watch on VHS which is only about half of what conventionally broadcast right. And the popularity of bandwidth these are like SCA. Versus standard VHS it just hasn't taken off you can get it that's around. I have Ron and I like it because it's around me.

And Rick Oregon right. Conventional thinking has offered a practitioner of popular certainly doesn't seem to agree with me because regular VHS is certainly far and away the most right spread use of the two systems. And makes me wonder OK if people aren't really satisfied with half of the resolution that conventional TV offers writers. A large amount of the population going to be interested in covering the resolution that conventional TV offers. Yeah I think it's a really good point. In my previous life I was once a publisher of a magazine called satellite direct and I did a number of research studies with Nielsen on the viewing habits of satellite TV folks and the number one reason they bought a dish was more channels. It wasn't better pitcher it wasn't better DirecTV used to always say we have a better picture better sound yeah they did. That's not why

people bought that. But people are really looking for at there are more options or entertainment options more convenience more features and so forth. It's Nona said their pictures. So when you start thinking about HDTV and whether people are willing to make the investment to buy an HDTV TV while it ain't happening and consequently not only that you know that for that reason on others the broadcast networks the cable companies and all are going you know why on earth would we devote all of this began with the HGTV when we got folks out there who are willing to pay the money for the better picture and all that excited about in the first place. Right you know I think where you're leading in Herat of the half hour. I'm really going to be unified to broadcast for our conventional channels rather than run a bandwidth channel. Yeah I tell you what they're in in TV dot com the book I predict that HGTV is going to be almost like a Neiman Marcus kind of product meaning it's going to be an elite product

and you're going to see it I think more on satellite TV than anything else. I think that with satellite TV with the technology they have they felt a little more flexibility there. And so I think that they will increase their HDTV coverage a bit in the coming years. And so if people really want HDTV they'll go Oh well OK I'll buy a dish to get it. And for that group it'll be worth it. But when you start thinking about cable and the millions of people who have cable I don't think HDTV is going to be really much of that part of that scenario. Well just to follow up quickly on that HDTV might be more likely to be used in the case of movies on demand that you would order through the system. Correct yeah. And again I think that would make the satellite offering very attractive with video on demand in paper view and so forth that you would be able to get an incredible picture with a great movie. It'll be like watching in the movie theater and for those who are building home theaters and there in the rec rooms or living rooms you can just imagine what that experience would be like so

yeah there certainly is going to be some programming out there pretty too. But the day that people were predicting a few years ago that every program in HDTV is a long ways away if it ever happens. Let's go on and include another couple of listeners if we can for at a time and we'll go next to Urbana listener in one line number three. Good morning you're on folks. 580 thinking about hardware and wondering whether these young designers are going to think about aging or at least control. That's a great question. The Web TV audience of the early interactive TV boxes is largely 50 and older and they have features on their own where you can do things like increase the size of the text on the screen and it's a great thing I tell you what I'll use it for someone who works at a PC all day long as my eyes are strained and it's very real he finds the on the on to be able to do it. So yeah they are thinking that way. They're thinking how do we make this thing really easy and convenient for

people so they're definitely thinking that way and I think that's really encouraging. But you can manipulate this thing to start with anything you need. The keypad. Yeah exactly. I'm sorry on the machine itself and on the remote. Big enough that you can easily find things. Voice you just say yeah you're right and I will say having just given your web tv a bit of a pound of back let me take it back on this respect on your keyboard could be more friendly could be more customer friendly. And for somebody who's have trouble you know seeing things up close. It can be a bit of a challenge but I think that's something that gets worked out in a shop in a laboratory and they are working on those kind of things. I haven't seen it so far on various things we just bought a new VCR and you know you could have they could have made just as it was pointing out the record in one color and something else another color and make it easy to find.

Yeah I agree with that I think some companies do that better than others. Not new TV. The category but in the PC category. Gateway has it's all their wires color code. It's incredible how much easier it makes it you know green does one thing and red does another and so when you're hooking up your PC with the cables It's amazing how much easier it is to do. Thanks thanks for the call. We'll go next to another listener panel on line number one. Good morning on focus 580. Yeah hello. The last caller actually had a question similar to that in terms of how well somebody read e-mail when they're sitting on a couch ten feet away from the screen. Right. Sometimes hard to read the mail when you're sitting right in front. Exactly again with with web tv and AOL TV when email is on your screen the text is a much larger size and it is designed to be read on television. You know we think about the email on a PC and often the word you know the type is very small and so for the type is large on your television through web tv and AOL TV and some of the others. So it is very easy to read. You don't have

to have some big projection TV to be able to read it. OK I have two other quick questions One is I read an article somewhere about this company out on the East Coast that is going to start something called TV dot tv which apparently is what you're talking about this interactive TV network. I don't know if you know anything about that my other question is What do you and you may have answered this before and so if you did then that's fine but what is what's happening with broadband. I mean is it going to be that we have our television and our cable and our telephone and everything else coming through one cable as it was promised. I mean we're this is a community that just recently got the at home cable service. So how is that playing out. Yeah it is coming. AT&T has been promoting it quite heavily AT&T broadband. They've had a grand vision of having pretty much all of your communication features coming through one cable and perhaps in the one box they've had some

slow growth on that. But generally speaking the industry is heading in a direction. They want all the communications going through one cable one box. In addition to that it will be able to be able to hook up to a home networking system that perhaps would be able to control your appliances on anything that's like electric in your home so you can do things like send an e-mail and turn your sprinkler system on your back yard can be incredible. And also to be able to connect all that to your handheld devices. So let's say you have a Palm Pilot and you were sitting in you know having lunch in a park somewhere and you went. Oh I forgot to turn the lights off in the rec room. You'll be able to send an e-mail through your Palm Pilot to be able to do that. So exactly that's where it's all heading it's all going to be connected very very soon. Thank you very much a very good show. Thanks for the call. We just have a couple minutes left. There is one thing I wanted to make sure we discussed and that is with the proliferation of channels available

and the ability to record anything at any time and played back you know later when we want. I mean that enables Plus the electronic programming guides will be available you could search for particular things you are interested in. Correct. And it's one of the great features electronic programming guide that if you have a specific interest in a show or an actor. Right. All you have to do is type in that name and it will tell you over the next two weeks every time that show is appearing or that actors in some show. So for example let's say you give some movies you type in Mel Gibson and I'll tell you every movie he's in over the next two weeks. And then you can actually have another bought and then I'll ask you whether you want to record any of them. So you're essentially programming your own channel and it's really are you could create the Mel Gibson channel. Well you know and that's wonderful and. Certainly if you want to you know view all episodes of MASH every ever produced you know you could probably do that as well. I mean it's the imagination goes any direction you want you could do anything you want with that sort of thing.

Right. You could if you have a specific interest in a lot of public radio you could type in public radio and it would give you every show that that is mention and description if you really want to board that. But the thing that this implies though is that further fragmenting of the audience can and will occur that we no longer will be a national sort of audience and all sort of attuned to the same the same channels will be breaking off in a zillion different directions. Yeah it's a great point because you know I'm all enough to remember the days where you had three channels and at the end you know the next morning after a really good show was on that you know people in the neighborhood would talk about that show or they might talk about the workplace around the water cooler hey to just see all in the family last night whoever was in it funny or something like that. Well now when you have hundreds and hundreds of channels and hundreds and hundreds of other entertainment options available. The chances that you go to the water cooler at work the next

day and bring up a program that somebody else there has seen it is going to be pretty rare. So it's definitely kind of change the community dynamic of how television leads that. And I mean really fascinating to see how it plays out. What I do I predict in the book is I said basically what's going to happen people are going to seek out people other people of similar interests. And so let's say you love the civil war and everything about civil war you'll go to people who you know are the similar to that GO TO DO see the Civil War documentary on the History Channel last night. And so that that that will create a little click a little group of people of similar interest but you're not going to have this like 20 people standing around the water Corps repeating the jokes of the show on NBC last night because the chances are 20 people watch it are going to be crazy. Well there's much more we could talk about we're going to leave it there since we're out of time but also just for folks if you want to read more on the subject you can look for the book we've been discussing TV dot com the future of interactive television. The author is Philip Swann. Last name S W

A N N and it's recently published by TV books and two Philips one thanks very much for talking Thank you it's my pleasure. Very interesting. Thank you.