Interactive TV still more promise than reality

Interactive TV is the marriage of a television with a computer and a telephone. When it comes of age, it will let you do all kinds of things while sitting on the living room couch, from voting to banking to answering questions on game shows.

However, at this point in time the U.S. is behind much of the rest of the world’s technologically developed nations — particularly Western Europe and Japan — when it comes to interactive television.

Richard Gross, a mass communications professor at the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley with a specialty in electronic media, lived in Japan and says it is a nation of early adopters. Japanese love having every little electronic product when it hits the market. But even in Japan, interactive TV is broadcast only to limited areas around Tokyo. Gross said one of the biggest problems with interactive TV is getting an audience big enough to justify a very large investment.

In order to make it work, an interactive television provider must have content, a content provider, a delivery mechanism, hardware and software from both the content provider and the end user, an interface between the two systems and a backchannel to communicate requests from the end user to the content provider.

Few business people would be willing to jump into the concept unless they were sure of getting a substantial number of viewers. “They face two big problems,´ said Gross. “One is getting together significant audiences. And two, keeping them.”

That’s because today’s viewers have so many choices of television programming, plus an endless Internet to surf with its interactive aspects (chat rooms, etc.) to grab a viewer’s time and attention.

Most ITV still on horizon

Granted, there are some interactive television options now available, including Dish satellite network, which has an interactive channel that allows subscribers to play games, get news and weather and other services.

But there’s much more coming in the not-too-distant future, including movies on-call without waiting until they cycle around again on a pay-per-view service. In addition, ITV will allow subscribers to answer game show questions, switch camera angles, send instant messages, take real-time classes, access music and video, do shopping and banking and take part in polls and surveys.

While the possibilities might seem endless, there are those who don’t see ITV catching on in a big way. Ross Beveridge, an associate professor of computer science at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, is pessimistic about interactive TV. “I don’t think that it exists in any meaningful way,” Beveridge said. “The Internet handles this kind of thing very well. At some point it’s like describing a computer.”

Beveridge said the nature of TV itself is one reason why interactive TV hasn’t taken off. The average resolution on a TV set, said Beveridge, is about 480 – 640 pixels. The resolution necessary for interactive TV is at least a 780-pixel area. “That means that even if you could send the New York Times online to people’s TV sets, they couldn’t read it.” Then there’s the question of cost. At present, that question can’t be answered because there are no real interactive TV systems in place. Bob Holt, who works in UNC’s distance education program in Greeley, said he couldn’t provide “any information at all about interactive television because it’s so new. It just isn’t something we deal with here right now.”

Gross said he believes ITV will initially be a pricey product because any network would have to build it from the ground up. And he can’t even guess what form it will take. Will the consumer have to buy a new interactive-equipped television? Or pay an ongoing fee for a service or services?

“Everything is up in the air right now,” he said.

The one thing everyone can agree on is the technology’s promise and that some form of interactive TV is on its way — eventually.

” I don’t think TV as we know it has a decade left,” Beveridge said. “TV is not very interactive and the choices we have now are not that many. I don’t think (TV as we know it) has a future.”

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