Interactive TV - What's On Now?
And that's actually a very good thing. The term "couch potato" comes from "vegging out" when watching TV. While everyone wants to veg out from time to time, interactive TV provides the opportunity to become much more involved.
So let's take a quick tour of the Interactive TV dial, see what's on, what features the programs offer, and what equipment we need.
ABC's Enhanced TV
ABC arguably has done the most to promote interactive TV through its Enhanced TV service, which works through any Web browser. To experience the enhancements, users must surf to ABC's site while the show is broadcast. This makes the format perfect for both the picture-in-browser format of WebTV Plus, and for viewers who have a PC in the same room as their TV set.
ABC uses Enhanced TV for Monday Night Football, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, The View and for some one-off shows like the 2001 Academy Awards broadcast. Additionally, because of ABC's ownership of ESPN, several ESPN offerings, such as its Sunday Night Football broadcast and college football bowl games offer Enhanced TV.
To use the Enhanced TV service, viewers must point their browsers to heavy.etv.go.com while an enhanced TV show is on. During a Monday Night Football broadcast, for example, real-time game and player statistics are available. Al Michaels asks users to participate in online polls, and to voice their opinions of key plays and referee calls.
For Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, viewers using Enhanced TV compete with thousands of other users as they answer questions from the show.
As questions appear and are read by host Regis Philbin on TV, the Enhanced TV application reveals the answer choices and allows the viewer to make his selection. Home contestants acquire points with correct answers. Answering quickly helps achieve additional bonus points.
Bonus questions take place during commercial breaks, which allow users to earn additional points with correct answers related to what is on the show that night. For example, users may mull over the color of Regis' tie or whether the contestant's partner is wearing contacts.
In February, ABC conducted an Enhanced TV contest. Home viewers competed to win a trip for four to attend the April 7 grand opening of the Who Wants to Be a Millionaire - Play It! attraction at Disney-MGM Studios. While the game show was being broadcast, Enhanced TV users entered their names and addresses. After the promotion ended, ABC randomly chose one grand prize winner to visit the Florida attraction.
CBS: Adding Modest Interactivity
CBS's efforts at interactivity are not as advanced as ABC's. Using the WebTV Plus platform, CBS added modest interactivity to C.S.I: Crime Scene Investigation, college basketball and football games, as well as the annual Grammy Awards.
Viewers of C.S.I: Crime Scene Investigation with WebTV Plus boxes can click on biographies of the show's characters, and receive information about them, but unfortunately, nothing on the actors themselves. In addition, bits of information and poll questions such as "Manual strangulation kills by impeding blood circulation and respiration: True or False?" pop up on the bottom line of the screen.
NBC: Building the Teen Network
NBC saw the logical pairing of WebTV Plus and teenagers, and dubbed its 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Saturday morning programming tNBC. Its programming features such interactive characteristics as TV-based chats, message boards and "t-mails" for Microsoft WebTV Plus service subscribers. The programming also allows teen viewers to play interactive games and compete for weekly and monthly prizes of tNBC-related merchandise.
Some other WebTV-enhanced programming that is offered by NBC includes Nightly News with Tom Brokaw, Dateline NBC, The Today Show and Notre Dame football.
Arts & Entertainment (A&E) Network
Screamingly Different Entertainment enhanced The Arts & Entertainment Network's popular Biography show for Interactive TV. Biography is available on the Liberate, WebTV Plus, and Intel Intercast platforms. Screamingly Different's efforts feature a store to purchase memorabilia related to the show, coming attractions for the next show, a forum to discuss the episodes with others, and an interactive biography of the celebrity being profiled by the TV show.
PBS The Wink Factor DirecTV and Dish Network Microsoft's Ultimate TV TV is Dead. Long Live Interactive TV
In addition to having numerous Web sites related to individual shows, PBS's
Wink Communications added a simple level of interactivity to a variety of cable and satellite system networks. The user needs only to acquire a Wink-enabled set-top box, which is available from cable companies or some of the satellite providers.
On CNN, viewers can get up-to-the-minute news headlines, as well as the latest U.S., world, sports, financial, weather and entertainment news.
On the Weather Channel, subscribers can access their local weather 24 hours a day. Viewers key their zip code into the set-top box for a display of current conditions and a five-day forecast. On the downside, the display loads slowly, especially compared with a cable-modem or satellite Internet connection to the Weather Channel's Web site.
In addition to ESPN broadcasts that make use of ABC's Enhanced TV software, viewers of the sports network can use Wink technology to watch one game while at the same time keep up with the latest scores and schedules in multiple leagues.
Many advertisers use Wink to enhance their commercials. For example, by pressing a button on their remote controls while a Land's End commercial is airing, viewers can request its catalog via "snail mail."
Of course, all of the above networks are available on satellite biggies DirecTV and Dish Network, who have both recently begun to offer similar interactive services through an arrangement with RCA and Wink.
Providers such as DirecTV and Dish Network have long offered a simple level of interactivity with their on-screen program guides. And just as video games led the way for the acceptance of home computers in the early 1980s, it can be argued that the interactive guides of today's satellite systems are leading the way towards the acceptance of a much more advanced level of interactivity for television viewers.
Recently, DirecTV subscribers began receiving "DirecTV Interactive" service. So far, the features of DirecTV Interactive, powered by Wink, are a bit on the bland side, but if interactive TV catches on with viewers, the features offered will likely expand.
In addition to ESPN, several sports channels now offer interactive scores of the day's games, and financial channels such as CNBC offer a view of how the markets are doing, at the press of a button on the set-top box's remote control. Also, the unit will store a credit card number and delivery information to make shopping at home, on channels like the Home Shopping Network, easier.
DirecTV's level of interactivity will take a huge leap forward in mid-2001, when it launches a satellite receiver powered by Microsoft's Ultimate TV software. The set-top box combines twin DirecTV tuners, DirecTV Interactive, WebTV, and a digital VCR (a la ReplayTV and TiVo). All of this will add picture-in-picture, the ability to record one DirecTV channel while watching another, and other features to the DirecTV experience.
Perhaps most important, the unit will integrate Internet viewing with DirecTV television offerings. Viewers will be able to watch a TV show and its related Web site at the same time. For example, viewers could watch Monday Night Football and follow the statistics of the game via MNF's Enhanced TV Web site. By the end of 2001, Microsoft plans to add a USB-to-Cat-5 dongle to allow the Ultimate TV box a plug into a high-speed Internet connection (such as a cable modem or DirecTV's own DirecPC satellite Internet service).
Being stuck with slow telephone modem connections has made it difficult for WebTV and all of the WebTV-based interactive TV applications to catch on with any computer-savvy adults or speed-loving kids. High speed access for the "smart" part of interactive TV will go far to help Microsoft's Ultimate TV to live up to its name.
All of this means that television as we have known it for 50-plus years is dead (though the non-interactive corpse will twitch for quite some time). While today's level of interactivity seems modest, new technology, such as Microsoft's WebTV Plus and Ultimate TV set-top boxes, could lead the way for even more interactive features being added to the next generation of set-top boxes.
Jeff Taylor, the author of Reason magazine's weekly e-mail newsletter about technology and politics (www.reason.com) says that once you start adding a set-top box to a television set, "You have a lot of different options for what that tuner does. Maybe what people want is a multi-purpose tool, not this single purpose appliance that only does one thing. It's just going to take time for people to try a few different combinations with the technology."
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