Interactive television: opportunities for new information services
| Published date | 01 February 1995 |
| Date | 01 February 1995 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/eb045350 |
| Pages | 99-115 |
| Author | David Raitt |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Library & information science |
Conference Presentation
Interactive television:
opportunities for new
information services*
David Raitt
Interactive television is something that is becoming quite
widely talked about these days. In the United States they
are going to have 500 television channels but not all of
them will be interactive. I understand that there is one
called the fish channel, or fish net, or something like this,
and
it just
consists
of fish swimming round
in
front
of your
eyes for nearly 24 hours out of
24;
so it might be very
relaxing but I do not know if you can really interact with
them much, unless
you
just open your mouth in the same
way
they
do.
Our speakers are going to talk about interactive televi-
sion. They are going to tell us what it is exactly. They are
going to tell us about the transmission technologies that
you
are able to
use,
how
you actually interact
with the
pro-
grammes. They
are
going
to
talk about
who
is involved in
interactive television, and why, and they are going to talk
about potential services that one can have available with
these devices.
Our very first speaker is going to tell us about what
interactive television
is —
Judith Jeffcoate.
She is an
inde-
pendent consultant specialising in new markets for infor-
mation technology,
she was
the lead author
on
a report by
Ovum on interactive television multimedia, and she has
just written a book on introduction to multimedia techno-
logy
and
applications.
Judith Jeffcoate
Computer
Consultant,
121
Milford
Avenue, Stony
Stratford,
Milton Keynes
MK11 1EZ, UK
Interactive television
to
many people
seems
to.
be a
contradic-
tion
in
terms.
Are all those couch potatoes who are
slumped
in
front of their television
sets
with
remote
controls really going
to
get
up
and interact
with the
television?
In a way that is slightly unfair, because people have been
changing the way they react with television for a number of
years.
For example, we now have videocassette recorders
which enable us to time shift. We have compact disc players
which to some extent allow us to interact with the existing
television.
We
have teletext on quite a number of televisions
which enables us
to get extra information from
them,
and most
recently
we have
a
choice
of ways
in
which
we can receive the
television. Not just the old terrestrial broadcast channels but
also satellite, cable and possibly also the telephone lines to
come.
It is
useful
to
think of interactive television
as being an
extension of those types of behaviour rather than an entirely
new kind
of behaviour that
we
should
expect
from
the
custom-
ers.
It will bring
with it
a range
of benefits.
First of
all
it is going to extend the choice of programme
and the time at which people can watch those programmes.
For example, we are going to see near video-on-demand —
that
is
where you will
be able to have the top 20 movies
avail-
able to
you.
You will be able to switch
on your
television and
start
watching that
movie at an
interval of about
10 to 15
min-
utes,
which most people are expected
to
find
acceptable.
You
can add
interactivity
to existing programmes by
extending the
teletext idea of transmitting some extra information over the
normal broadcast
channel.
You can increase the control over
the viewing experience. Another simple way of interacting
with the
television
is,
for
example,
to use
extra channel
capac-
ity to
enable you to switch between
camera angles or to
select
a
different
outcome
to
the crime
thriller that
you are
watching.
Finally, the reason that many of you might
be
most interested
in interactive television, you can improve access to products
and
services.
Some people may be
familiar
with the new home
shopping channels,
by
which you
see a
sparkling necklace on
• Extend
choice
of programme
and
time.
• Add interactivity
to
existing programmes.
• Increase control over
viewing
experiences.
• Improve
access to
products
and
services.
Consumer benefits of interactive
TV.
Edited transcript of panel session at the 18th International Online
Information
Meeting,
London, 6 December 1994. Chairman:
David
Raitt,
The
Netherlands.
The Electronic Library, Vol. 13, No. 2, April 1995 99
the television and you can ring up and buy it immediately. In
the future you will be able to use the remote control to do that
by just pressing a button; the money will be deducted from
your smart card and the trinket will be in the post to you the
next day.
So,
what does interactive television consist of? Well, we
think there are three basic components. First of all it has to be
a source of information
in
most cases — not quite
all.
Some of
the early examples do not have a server but most of them will,
and that server perhaps will sit at
the
cable head end and
it
will
contain a range of information stored possibly on hard disk,
possibly on optical disc which can be called up by the cus-
tomer. It
is
going
to have to
have some sort of receiving device
in the customer
premises.
Typically, at the moment most peo-
ple have an addition to the television — a
set-top box, a VCR, maybe a CD player.
The set-top box will be built to receive
these new interactive services but it
is
pos-
sible that some of the other components
might be adapted to do that. For example,
why not combine the CD player with the
television and have that as the receiver?
So I think one of the things that you will
see is that the separate bits and pieces that
are littering our living rooms will gradu-
ally coalesce into one nice, intelligent
video communication centre. And be-
tween the source and the receiver at the
customer's home there is going to be a
two-way transmission channel. Most of it
will be coming
into the
home,
some sort of
fairly broad link, with a much narrower link going out of the
home containing billing information, customer requests and
so on.
Customer behaviour
How do we expect people's behaviour to evolve to cope with
these new opportunities? You see here that I have plotted the
level of interaction, from the current totally passive state of
receiving whatever the broadcast companies put out up to a
highly interactive state, and compared that with the type of
interaction — whether it is one-to-many
in the
broadcast situ-
ation or one-to-one in the future situation, where you will be
able to communicate with one other person or
a
group of other
people using your television as the medium. You will see that
over time we expect the behaviour of the
customers to evolve in that way. Current
activities are round the pay-per-view and
the near video-on-demand services which
I have mentioned, and also things like spe-
cialised sports. You may now have to take
out a satellite subscription in order to get
certain key sporting events, various inter-
active games, and soon you will be able to
use interactive games downloaded over
the cable and played back on your televi-
sion. Sega is doing this already in the
United States. There are limited amounts
of home shopping already, and as I have
said those will evolve into much more in-
teractive types of home shopping.
There are two key developments in the
future. One will be video-on-demand and
this is now true video-on-demand — that
means that you should be able to dial up
any programme that you want at any time
of the day and have
it
start instantaneously
as far
as
you are concerned. A great deal of
work has to go into getting that situation.
First of all, all that material needs to be
100 The Electronic Library, Vol. 13, No. 2, April 1995
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