Editor's View: What's Missing?

by Matthew York
Summer/Fall 2002

Smart TV & Sound readers are early adopters. You do not fear new technology. Quite to the contrary you are exhilarated by it. You are willing to embrace products that have not been fully market tested.

However, for this marketplace to become popular, early adopters are not enough. The interactive TV market has been "coming into its own, any time now" for about five years. I want to examine the obstacles that are getting in the way of the mainstream users.

Interactive TV is hard to appreciate unless you experience it for more than two weeks. Unlike a VCR or a camcorder, an interactive TV product takes time to appreciate. It is hard to understand how a PVR (personal video recorder) can affect your life merely by watching a few TV shows from a TiVo at a friend's house. After living with a PVR for two weeks, you begin to understand its effect on your TV time.

Most people are reluctant to figure out how to introduce another device into their living room setup. There are so many wires going to all of their other devices that many find it daunting to consider integrating one more product into the mix.

People do not want another remote control. Even if a professional installer is involved, there's a chance that a new interactive TV would require another remote control.

Only cable and satellite TV companies offer high-performance interactive TV devices. If people had the chance to examine a product in an electronics store, they'd be more inclined to consider a purchase. Many people have a fundamental distrust of satellite and cable TV providers that also install the hardware.

The new MPEG-4 format provides a way to download high-quality video. And although MPEG-4 will eventually revolutionize the way we select TV shows, too few homes have the bandwidth now to download these files.

There are not yet any credible applications for VDL (video delivered later), which is the inverse of VOD (video on demand). We need an application that allows viewers to select TV shows from a menu and have the fetching task take place behind the scenes.

I have not written this to discourage any of you early adopters. I commend and congratulate all of you. The people that run the companies that make these devices need to know what's holding up the mainstream. I have written this for their benefit.