Top TV Technologies For The Year 2000

by Roger Wyatt
Winter 1999/Spring 2000

Get ready now; it's time for the venerable 1900s to make way for the roaring 2000s. Enough of that year 2000 bug gloom and doom; we have much to celebrate, including an entire array of killer TV technology that will take us happily viewing and surfing well into the new century.

For starters, there are a whole lot more features and product categories than there were in the late lamented 1900s. In this article, we'll first take a look at the newer, smarter features that will be gracing our televisions in the coming months. Then we'll survey the new product categories that consumer electronics manufacturers have made available--or will soon make available--to the viewing public.

Electronic Program Guides
One thing that we can say for sure is that the New Year will bring more TV programming than ever before. 300- channel systems are already quite common, and there are more on the way. The main problem is no longer "Is there a program?" it's finding the right program at the right time. Even Jesse Ventura will have a hard time lugging around his TV Guide; and we'll all have that much programming to sort through every week. Enter the EPG, better known as the Electronic Program Guide. Like the compass, the EPG will be an essential tool for navigating the oceans of television programming. A good EPG lists the week's programs by type as well as by day and time, and allows the viewer to search for programs by director, actor or key words. EPGs, such as those by Gemstar and WebTV, are already available in some VCRs, TVs, satellite receivers, cable set-top boxes, PC/TV tuner cards, net-top boxes and the like. Others, such as TV Guide Online, GistTV and UltimateTV are available through the Web. As a class, EPGs will continue to gain popularity.

Channel Hyperlinking
The hyperlink is one of the most effective interactive concepts being deployed in today's technology. After all, the concept of hyperlinks is what makes the Web the wonderful information-gathering tool it is. Now suppose that the tube and the Web could be hyperlinked. Well, WorldGate Communications (www.wgate.com) has developed a technology to do just that. They call it Channel Hyperlinking. It's a proprietary system that operates through existing cable television networks. With Channel Hyperlinking, you can access Web sites that relate to the program you're watching. No need to choose between TV or the Net; nor is a phone line or a 2-way digital cable box required for getting online. For analog cable connections, the WorldGate service makes use of the VBI (vertical blanking interval) portion of the television signal to send data downstream to the user at 128 kilobits per second (Kbps). Digital cable subscribers who use the WorldGate service will reap the benefits of faster upstream and downstream communication. Because this technology merges programming with related Web sites, you can get the Net straight from your TV. Imagine, there you are, watching your favorite show. Click a button and you're at a companion Web site where you find daily summaries, previews, message boards, games and contests. Didn't understand the show? Well, talk it over with other viewers in a hyperlinked chat room. Hypersurf's up.

While WorldGate may be a pioneer in Channel HyperLinking, WebTV and others offer similar linking from television programs to their companion Web sites. Broadband Internet services, such as Excite@Home (www.home.net), which has exclusive deals with big cable players such as Cablevision, Comcast and Cox Enterprises are sure to provide this feature. In this kind of development, we can see a trend that will recur again and again in the year 2000 and beyond: the attempt to connect everything, including broadcast signals, to the Internet.

Data Enhancement
Here at year 2000's start, enhanced broadcasting is emerging as a powerful agent for change in television programming and distribution. After years of trials, interactive television is becoming a reality on your screen. We're talking here about going way beyond a link from a TV show to its Web site. We're talking enhanced programs that deliver information, links, graphics and more; stuff that actively corresponds with the content of the program simultaneously as you're watching. For an example, take a blink at Wink.

Wink (www.wink.com) is a technology that television viewers are beginning to experience through certain TV sets, cable operators or direct broadcast satellite (DBS) providers. Wink allows program producers, merchants, broadcasters, cable programmers and advertisers to create interactive extensions to television ads and programs. By clicking on your trusty remote during a Wink-enhanced program or advertisement, you can open a small window on the screen to access text and graphics conveying related information. Some examples might be weather reports, sports updates, product samples or coupons. Since it's interactive, you could just as easily vote in polls or play an interactive game. If you're so inclined, you could buy something instantly with a click of a remote. Wink inserts data into the TV signal's vertical blanking interval (VBI) or, in digital systems, encodes it as part of the MPEG stream. It then collects data coming back from viewers by phone line and delivers it to the appropriate program provider or advertiser.

WaveTop provides a similar service to those with certain tuner cards in their PCs. Here's an example: PBS recently delivered enhanced television content along with a Frank Lloyd Wright documentary. They did this with WaveTop technology (www.wavetop.net). Internet content is broadcast over the local PBS TV station's VBI signal, which is interpreted and saved by a special kind of TV tuner card. The data is automatically stored on the hard drive for instant access. To access the enhancements, you would need a computer running Windows 95 or 98, the free WaveTop software and a Wavetop-compatible TV tuner/capture card. You can get one of these cards for about $60.

A Standard for Enhancements
Here's yet another example of how standards enable linking of everything to everything else. Take the ATVEF standard--that's the Advanced Television Enhancement Forum. It's from a cross-industry group of television programmers, computer software companies and consumer electronics manufacturers, including CNN, Discovery, Disney, NBC Multimedia, PBS, Tribune Company, Warner Brothers, DirecTV, Sony, Intel, Microsoft and others. They have developed a common broadcast industry specification for adding data enhancements to the television signal.

The ATVEF standard opens far greater bandwidth (space in the TV signal) for these enhancements than is available in the VBI. It could enable streaming video-on-demand or large software downloads. The standard supports HTML, enabling program providers to use existing Web pages as enhancements. Finally, it insures that consumers won't get caught in the cross-fire of competing incompatible enhancement standards. All of these specifications are set in the ATVEF specification. So let's hear a rousing chorus of Long Live The Standard.

Manufacturers will be able to provide viewers with a choice of receivers for enhanced programming, including set-top boxes, digital televisions and PCs. All equipment that conforms to the specification will have the ability to display enhanced content. Viewers will choose whether to turn on the enhanced elements. Once they turn them on, there can be two levels of interactivity: content-only enhancement or content with links to additional information for two-way interactivity.

Personal TV
Artificial intelligence (AI) may conjure up images of HAL from Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, but the reality is that AI research has many practical uses above and beyond the mere creation of a talking, thinking, spaceship-piloting computer. Like getting to know your personal preferences, for instance.

Imagine, for example, a VCR with the ability to learn which types of programs you like to watch. It could keep track of every minute you spend in front of the television, and note that you often choose, say, spaghetti westerns and classic 1950s science fiction movies. Such a guide could not only remember the specific shows you watch week in and week out: it could suggest new programs that it thinks you might like, based on your past selections. Turn on the television and your VCR notifies you about the current week's offerings of Clint Eastwood movies and a Sci-Fi Channel broadcast of The Day the Earth Stood Still. Now imagine that your VCR has already recorded many of these offerings, just in case. Pretty cool stuff. TiVo has already built this kind of intelligence into its--not VCRs-DVRs: Digital Video Recorders. Along with features that enable the viewer to pause, rewind and fast-forward live telecasts, this feature will come to define the "personal TV" experience. Some next-generation satellite tuners, cable set-tops, net-top boxes and competing DVRs are sure to adopt this feature.

E-Commerce
Remember that technology trend about connecting everything to the Internet? Well, that's what e-commerce is all about. For starters, it's about connecting you through the Web to a vendor anywhere in the world. It's about doing this from any platform, whether it's a traditional desktop computer, PDA (personal digital assistant), WebTV, DVR (digital video recorder), cable set-top box or any of a multitude of new technologies yet to be invented. Here's an example.

Scientific Atlanta's Explorer 2000 cable set-top box uses IBM's Net.Commerce to deliver e-commerce capability. IBM's Net.Commerce allows customers to quickly, easily and securely conduct electronic commerce on the Net. The system supports the use of public-key cryptography, which is vital for secure transactions and credit card safety in cyberspace. The box even comes with a smart card slot for e-commerce applications.

High-speed Internet Access
When you're online, do you feel the need for speed? Got the POTS (plain old telephone system) blues with a 56k modem that is barely adequate for multimedia on the Net? Not to worry--help is on the way. DSL (Digital Subscriber Line) and cable modem services bring high-speed information, like quality streaming audio and video, into homes over ordinary telephone lines or cable connections.

The term xDSL refers to different variations of DSL, such as ADSL (Asynchronous Digital Subscriber Line). Local phone companies all over the country (such as Bell Atlantic, US West and Pacific Bell) are offering home DSL service. If your home is near enough to a telephone company central office that offers DSL service, you can receive data at rates anywhere from 384Kbps (thousand bits per second) to 6.1 Mbps (million bits per second), but with lower upstream send speeds. What all this means for you is the ability to download large files very rapidly, or to experience continuous streams of video and audio, even full-screen and full speed, with no stuttering or break-ups.

In the past year or so, the cable industry has developed a standard called DOCSIS (Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification). It allows for two-way transfer of information and data over the Internet through a cable television system at downstream speeds of up to 36Mbps. The cable operator is now capable of offering digital services such as Internet access, video-on-demand programming and even telephony.

In the very near future, bandwidth envy is going to be a thing of the past. Already cable (and satellite) modems are spreading across the country. DSL in all its flavors is starting to be offered by local phone companies. Smart TV readers are rapidly moving into a multi-choice high-bandwidth universe. What this adds up to is a true multimedia Internet experience. The greater the bandwidth, the easier it is to access a high-quality streaming video experience. The bigger the pipe, the greater the amount of data that can stream through it. The result is Net that looks more like television than herky-jerky dancing pixels on a postage stamp.

PC/TVs can already make use of high speed connections. In the future, look for cable modem and DSL versions of net-tops as well.

E-mail and Web Surfing
As we have seen, e-mail and Web surfing are fast becoming standard features with many types of set-top boxes. It's a function of connecting everything to everything. If it's a device that communicates information, then, most likely, it's a device that will connect to the Internet.

Net-top Boxes
WebTV Plus boxes have an EPG (Electronic Program Guide) capability, which allows you to search for programs up to seven days in advance by day and time, keyword or category. Listings provide links to companion Web sites and the units support data-enhanced programming. Even if you're on the Internet you get reminded. Or is that nagged? Also, with a click of the remote, WebTV Plus automatically programs your VCR to record any program.

But there is more. You can send plain text e-mail, or attach still images and short snippets of audio. Grab these from your video camera, VCR or digital still camera and then send them winging across cyberspace.

WebTV Plus boxes (www.webtv.com) are available from Sony, Philips Magnavox or Mitsubishi. America Online, among others, is also getting into the net-top game. It's developing a service called AOLTV. AOL. It bought NetChannel, an established net-top service provider, to do this. While precise features and services have yet to be announced, early signs indicate that AOL's service will emphasize data enhancements to TV programming rather than simple Web-surfing. Stay tuned.

For a complete listing of net-top boxes see our buyer's guide (p.30) in this issue.

DBS Satellite Systems
While all the DBS (Direct Broadcast Satellite) systems offer EPGs, Hughes also offers high-speed Internet access while EchoStar has taken the lead in offering other data features

Hughes' DirecPC downloads data at speeds up to 400 Kbps. That's 28 times faster than the typical copper wire phone line dial-up connection commonly used today. With a satellite Internet, software downloads are screamingly fast.

EchoStar has introduced digital set-top boxes with OpenTV software. OpenTV will provide DISH Network satellite television customers with the ability to access a variety of enhanced television services, including e-mail, e-commerce, music information, customer care assistance and other interactive services. EchoStar's Model 3800 and Model 4700 receivers will support these OpenTV features.

On a different software track, EchoStar also offers a WebTV-based receiver, the DISHPlayer, which includes an EPG, channel hyperlinks, data enhancements and e-mail. For a complete review of the DISHPlayer, see "Black Boxes" (p.22) in this issue.

Hughes will offer a competing package sometime in '00 when it will bring out a DirecTV receiver that supports AOLTV features.

Digital Video Recording Devices
Digital Video Recorders (DVRs) take an innovative approach to taping television programming. They are tapeless, for one thing, and smart, for another.

This category is currently represented by two companies, ReplayTV and TiVo. Both products have large hard drives for recording television programs. Both of them have extensive databases to search for relevant shows--another version of the EPG concept. Since these systems are tapeless, the viewer can jump instantly to any program on the hard drive.

Both units provide VCR-style controls and the ability to create personalized "channels" or categories of programming. The TiVo unit additionally "learns" user preferences.

For $499, TiVo's basic model records up to 10-hours of material. An advanced model with 30-hours of recording capacity is available for $999.

ReplayTV units start at around $699. They too will have several models with hard drives of varying sizes to digitally record programs. The largest will record 28-hours of VHS-quality video.

TiVo charges a $10 monthly fee. ReplayTV does not. In both cases, however, what we're looking at is an entirely new way of using television.

Cable TV
Given what we have been saying about trends and connectivity, it shouldn't be a surprise that standards are a big part of the cable industry's year 2000 story. Consider MCNS (multimedia cable network system), the backbone on which the aforementioned DOCSIS cable modems operate.

With the MCNS-DOCSIS standards in place, the cable industry is set to undergo some exciting changes in the realm of interactivity. Think of it: if a DOCSIS cable modem allows two-way high-speed data transmission, what's to stop cable companies from offering fully interactive programming, e-commerce applications or any other type of two-way digital information service--including Internet-based telephony? At this writing, cable operators are forming alliances with various interactive services such as Excite@Home and AOLTV.

On the flip side, what's to stop telephone companies with DSL capabilities from offering the same or similar services? One thing's certain: the world of year 2000 television programming will be an open battleground of technological innovation, driven by open standards and probably resulting in more choices for the consumer.

Smart Game Consoles
Video game consoles are now part of the year 2000 interactivity/connectivity mix. For example, Sega's Dreamcast gaming console is more than just an awesome entertainment machine with killer 3D graphics; it is the first game machine to ship with a 56K modem as a standard feature. With this built-in modem, owners will be able to connect to the Sega Dreamcast Network, a sort of proprietary mini-Internet that only Dreamcast players will be able to access. The primary purpose of the Dreamcast network will be for players to connect with each other worldwide, but e-mail and chat will be offered as well. With online gaming projected to reach 27-million players by the year 2002, Sega's Dreamcast seems to be pointed in the right direction.

DVD Enhancements
Over 120 interactive titles are in development. One interactive DVD film, I'm Your Man staring MTV's Kevin Seal, lets you pick and choose alternatives at 36 points in the story. You will also find outtakes, explanations, a plot map, onscreen graphics, storyboards, a documentary of the production and a soundtrack by Joe Jackson.

The DVD-Video format does support a number of interactive features: it can hold up to nine camera angles so that different viewpoints can be selected during playback, and can provide menus of alternative choices for movies, games or quizzes. To date, few DVD-video publishers have fully exploited these features. We hope for more in Y2K.

NUON, formerly known as Project X, has come to be included in Motorola's Streamaster, a powerful set of technologies for advanced set-top boxes. This is destined for deployment in a number of DVD players. These could have the abilities to play enhanced DVDs (with extra-special effects, hyperlinked scenes and branching menus) and DVD-based games, as well as browse the Web and provide e-mail service. NUON promises to bring impressive enhancements to a wide range of digital video devices.

The View Ahead
Looking back on this array of innovative technologies we can see that while some cover many of the same capabilities, connecting to the Web for instance, they all emphasize depth in specific areas, such as NUON in gaming or DVRs in videotape replacement. The challenge for Smart TV viewers is to analyze which mix of features makes the most sense given their own needs, desires and interests. It will take some doing, but those choices will define a new era of television. Welcome to the year 2000! Now excuse me while I surf my interactive set-top digital whatever.