The Internet: Coming Soon To A TV Near You

by Matthew York
Fall 1997

Many new technologies are enabling us to get more out of our TV experience by making our TV sets smarter. The most exciting development increasing our TV's intelligence is connection to the Internet. The Internet's most compelling feature is it's specificity. There has never been a medium, with the possible exception of the telephone, that offered so many potential choices. You can call millions of people with your telephone, however most people wouldn't care to have a conversation with you. The Internet allows you to access an unlimited number of computers loaded with entertainment and information. The options are available on your own time schedule or "on demand" as the experts say. Unlike TV as we know it the Internet delivers what you want when you demand it. The Internet will truly revolutionize TV as we know it. The question is what will this experience be like?

The 'Net-top Experience

The Internet consists primarily of text. Electronic mail and Web sites consist of letters, words, sentences and paragraphs. However, text is not ideally suited for the television. Although we occasionally read text on TV during game shows or in the credits to a movie, reading from a TV screen is not enjoyable for a few reasons. Compared to the action that we experience while sitting in front of a TV, looking at text is really dull. It doesn't move and it doesn't make any sounds. It pales compared with even a boring TV show.

Another problem is that watching TV is not an individual experience. Most of us watch TV in groups. This is problematic for the text-based Web because we all read at different speeds. Some people skim, while others read word for word. In a group of three people, one will likely feel rushed, while another will feel bored when finishing before the others. Most Web sites lack a solution to this multi-viewer pacing problem

Navigation poses yet another problem. Scrolling through text is cumbersome on a TV. The Web experience is not linear, like a TV show. There is no defined beginning, middle and end. Some would suggest that there are lots of beginnings and middles but no end.

The Internet experience is not a passive one, like TV watching. The user has a variety of choices to make along the way. The choices -- literally millions -- that the Internet provides to users are truly mind boggling. Getting a group of people to agree on one path is challenging because each decision leads to more options. The person with the remote has to navigate for the entire group.

As it exists today, the Internet doesn't have the compelling content that groups of people expect to experience from the couch. We are used to presentations where all we do is sit back and take it in. We are not accustomed to making choices while watching TV.

But Web sites are more than just text on a screen. Almost all Web sites have some graphics in the form of drawings or photographs. There is no doubt that images are more pleasing on a TV compared with text. However, many of the problems persist. Still images are not as rewarding to see when compared to the moving images that we usually see on TV.

TV or Not TV

More and more sites feature animated graphics, and although most look like cheap cartoons, at least they move. Limited motion is certainly better than no motion at all, even if it does look a bit jerky. Every month, the quality of these animations is getting better thanks to new software like Macromedia's Shockwave and faster computers with more powerful chips (like Intel's Pentium MMX). While WebTV cannot currently take advantage of either of these developments, they do have plans for motion in the near future. There will soon be plenty of Web sites with enough motion to provide a good experience from the couch.

Sound is another feature that most Web sites lack. Like animation, audio enhancement is possible with the proper combination of hardware (again, a powerful chip) and a new kind of software that delivers something called "streaming media." "Streaming" is supposed to mean that the information flows to you with no delay, which is becoming more and more true each day (often the stream of sounds is delayed or interrupted temporarily). There are specific software packages for streaming audio like Progressive Network's RealAudio that provide a reasonable solution to the silent Web site problem. Shockwave has a streaming audio feature built into it, combining moving graphics with matching sound. It features an advanced development that is making the Internet more like TV: streaming video.

Like the streaming audio and animated graphics features, streaming video requires the proper combination of hardware (once again a powerful chip) and a new kind of software aptly named "streaming video." The term video is used loosely here. It looks more like a TV image compared with animated graphics, but the images are small (1/4 screen) and grainy (not sharp), and the motion is not nearly as fluid as traditional TV. With all the acronyms that are bandied about, there is none to describe this except CLV (crummy little video). There is no doubt that once the CLV problem is overcome and the Internet is capable of delivering true TV-quality video on demand, most TV viewers will become interested in the Internet. High-quality streaming video will be like having a video rental store with every videotape ever made, right in your house. The only difference is that you won't need to handle the cassettes. This will truly be reason enough for most people to get their TVs connected to the Internet.

It may take a few years (some say as little as five) for TV quality video to become available to the masses on the Internet. Without going into technical detail, the problem lies in the "electronic plumbing." Video takes up more resources than anything else on the Internet. Most homes are connected to the Internet via telephone lines which are not large enough to properly handle video. In some large cities, cable TV distributors are using their "fat" wires to send the Internet into homes. During the next few years there will be a few intermediate steps that will suffice to make the Internet "meaningful from the couch," even without full-motion video. An intermittent step will be simple presentations that will look something like a slide show. This is more suitable for multiple viewers because the pacing is preset, like a TV show's.

Manufacturers are betting on the fact that most TV viewers are willing to sacrifice quality for specificity. A neat example of this is home video of our children. The quality of our homemade "TV shows" is incredibly poor compared with network television, but we watch home videos because we see something highly specific that we can't see any other way. The trade-off is quality for specificity.

Affordable Access

The logic behind the television Internet device is that it will serve as a low cost, easy to use method for delivering the Internet to the masses. No longer is it necessary to spend upwards of $2000 to gain access to the Internet on a full-blown PC. The reality is that some set-top Internet devices will enter the market at less than $200, making them easily affordable, even for those on a tight budget. Some have begun to refer to these as 'Net-top boxes. Most boxes will require a modest monthly service fee of around $20 for Internet access, and the manufacturer will act as the Internet service provider (ISP). WebTV for example, requires the user to pay a separate subscription fee for its service. This is fine if you do not already subscribe to another provider, however a large number of people who are currently accessing the Internet on their PCs are attracted to television 'Net-top boxes as secondary units. This way the kids could get on the Internet without having to use mom's or dad's expensive PC and the family could explore the Internet together from the comfort of the family room. You might think that the inconvenience of having to pay monthly fees to two ISPs would cause conventional Internet surfers to shy away from 'Net-top devices like WebTV that are ISP-dependent. Unbelievably, a large percentage of WebTV subscribers do pay for a second ISP to connect the device. This fact would seem to suggest that WebTV is finding an audience, even as it exists today. The newest trend, however, is toward ISP independence. ISP-independent boxes, like Green Technologies' net.top.box, will soon be on the market. These boxes will allow users the freedom to "shop around" for the best service provider. Those PC users who are already connected to one ISP will not need to pay an additional service charge to use their set top box; they will merely add it as another terminal and continue to use their existing service provider. The move toward ISP-independent television Internet devices is colossal and may prove devastating to those units that cannot offer such options, forcing them to change their operating systems or die.

Will the Internet play on the TV set? The manufacturers seem to think so. Television Internet devices are springing up across the industry. There are currently more than 20 companies investing in the convergence of TV and the Internet, and more are joining in each month. It looks as though the living room may never be the same. Channel surfing may soon be replaced by Web surfing. And the television will no longer be known as the "boob tube" but as an interactive window to the world of information.

Matthew York is Smart TV's publisher/editor.

[sidebar]
Makers of "'Net-top Boxes"

Akai Digital
Internet Connection
www.akai.com

American Interactive Media
WebPASSPORT System
609 661-0609
www.aime-inc.com/products/

Batra
WebSurfer
888 527-8888
www.websurfer.org

Curtis Mathes
uniView 210
888 uniView
www.curtismathes.com

Inter-Con/PC, Inc.
CyberSpider
612 975-0001

Green Technologies
net.top.box
562-494-6642
www.greentech.com

Phillips/Magnavox
WebTV
888 813-7069
www.magnavox.com

PlanetWeb/Zilog
415 903-7000
www.planetweb.com

Proton
Xavier
310 404-2222

Sony
WebTV
888 772-SONY
www.sony.com

Thomson/RCA
RCA/NC
317 587-4450
www.rca-electronics.com

Zenith
NetVision NCTV
847 391-7000
www.zenith.com

[sidebar]
TV That Knows You

Plans are in the works for a standard that will allow your TV, VCR and 'Net-top box to communicate with one another, converting your VCR into a video-mailbox. An Internet agent will learn what you like, search program listings for items that match your interests, tune your TV and tell your VCR when to record. The result is similar to an on-screen program guide (like StarSight or TV Guide Plus+) that allows VCR programming with the touch of a single button.

[sidebar]
URLs&CDs4TV

Not all Web sites and CD-ROMs are tuned into the smart TV concept yet. After lots of couch surfing, we've concluded that a few key attributes will make an image work well on the TV screen: