Toob: Smart Frontiers
Television is set to radically change the way we conduct business, enjoy entertainment, gather information and communicate. Television will have an impact upon our society, our culture and our individualism more profound than any product in history. TV, after all, is the way millions of people will join the digital revolution and we expect some form of a smart TV will be in all of our homes very soon.
A smart TV allows viewers to get exactly the programming and information they want precisely when they want it, especially the information most pertinent to their needs. Everyone has different needs for information and these needs change over time. Old TV is based on delivering identical information to millions of viewers all at the same time. Smart TV is based on delivering highly specific personalized content, whether it's information, entertainment, or some hybrid of the two.
The proliferation of cable television has provided more choices to meet these needs, and the growth of digital broadcast satellite (DBS) continues this trend. Niche programming made possible by cable and DBS have allowed specialty channels to thrive with fewer numbers of viewers. VCRs, too, have given us greater ability to select what we want. The emergence of the "tapeless" VCR or digital recorder is a continuation of this trend. ReplayTV by Replay Networks and TiVo by Teleworld are both VCR-type devices that use a hard drive to record and store programs instead of VHS tape. Similarly, Duck Corp.'s DuckVision is a software package that allows a PC user with a tuner card to use the PC hard drive as a tapeless VCR. Inexpensive digital storage media and improvements in digital compression technology will continue to drive this emerging category of consumer-friendly products.
The boom in technology and the acceptance of both digital television and digital storage and transmission of content via CDs, DVDs and the Internet opens new worlds of possibilities for TV. This issue we take a close look at some of the most exciting developments on the Smart TV frontier, including a DVD-Video player buyer's guide and feature stories about cable Internet connections, electronic program guides and couch-friendly user interfaces. For the very bleeding edge, we review two new products that fit a category we call the Super Net-top Box, which we believe will be the future of television, along with the new D-VHS video recording format. See how these entrants fared in our living room test lab on page 22. The Super Net-top Box category originally described an "affordable" PC/TV, that is a PC designed for the living room. At the time that we dreamed up the term Super Net-top Box, a PC/TV had an average retail price of more than $4,000 and included a large multimedia monitor. In September, Gateway lowered the price of its Destination (its PC/TV model name) to under $2000, so now even with a 27-inch monitor it almost fits the Super Net-top Box price range. Cyrix, on the other hand, is offering a Super Net-top Box (with a DVD drive and no monitor) for under $700. Motorola's Blackbird is a similar set-top device (although not PC-based) and its price will probably be as low as $300 within two years. None of this, by the way, is to be confused with something like NCR's Microwave Bank-a microwave oven that offers access to online banking, shopping and e-mail-and can even cook your dinner. For our take on the most interesting developments on the digital frontier, we are proud instead to introduce in this issue Other Smart Stuff, a column dedicated to smart home technology we think you'll appreciate as much as a smart TV.
Finally, as this is our one-year anniversary issue, we hope it's more apparent than ever that smart TV is more than just interactive, selective, educational or entertaining. It's an entirely new way of thinking about television.
Matthew York is editor and publisher of Smart TV
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