Broadband: the interactive technologies: Chapter 3 an excerpt from "The Last Mile: Broadband and the Next Internet Revolution" by Jason Wolf and Natalie Zee. Copyright [c] 2001 by the McGraw-Hill companies. Reprinted by permission of The McGraw-Hill companies

Cable World, Nov 27, 2000

This is the fun part. We truly believe that companies that work on the Internet are unknowingly redefining the future of the world's economic, entertainment, and telecommunications industries. Remember all that talk years ago about 500 channels of TV? Forget that. The Internet is the TV of the future, and a grand unification of information and technology is rapidly converging to make it possible.

WebTV is the first service that comes to mind here. In case you haven't heard of WebTV, this is the company that Microsoft invested millions of dollars into a few years back. WebTV manufactures a small box that you plug your cable and phone line into and then connect to your TV. Accompanying the setup is a wireless mouse and keyboard. The result is a bizarre mixture of windows that flip around, containing the TV shows you want to watch and their respective websites, or any site. Some TV shows even take advantage of this, providing a "come visit our Web site" blurb, and the WebTV unit presents you with a link that you can use to instantly visit that site. When you do, you see both the website and the TV show, allowing you to buy tie-in merchandise. It's very compelling, highly interactive, and the compulsive buy factor is so high that it is easy to find oneself with a most random collection of things. For example, you could be watching a movie, notice how much you are enjoying the soundtrack, visit a site like Amazon.com to purchase it, and return to the movie in time to see the ending. The only issue with WebTV is that it currently isn't broadband-capable; it only offers a 56-kbps modem connection. However, it's still fun, and it's only a matter of time before a broadband version will be available.

How can a dot com benefit from something like this? Well, first think multimedia. Find someone who can blend technologies together that can be distributed via the Internet. If you work in the video industry, hooking up with a flash developer will allow your video to have a top layer of high-quality, vector-based artwork/animation that adds an interactive interface to your video. Instead of being able to start and stop video, your customers could jump to different sections or even pick their own endings. Internet innovation is what will push your company further than your competition. That interactive animation layer could contain "hotspots" that are floating over your video, allowing consumers to click and buy what they are watching. The interactive layer contains all the necessary URL locations and/or shopping cart information for the video layer. Now, it's true that this solution of mixing video and interactivity together would require more bandwidth than a normal modem can handle, but that's the point with a broadband connection.

With broadband, customers will no longer have to wait for websites to download. They can expect video, sound, text, graphics, and photos, all married together in some unique fashion. It's up to you or your multimedia engineers to figure out how to make all the components look good and work well together. Because the Internet can contain and transmit multimedia elements, to take full advantage of it, you must stop thinking in linear terms in your delivery. Although TV is linear--it's just a stream of data that can be turned on or off--the Internet is more like a tree. This unique branching can be used to do things such as show the lyrics of an MP3 that is streaming. (From a commercial angle, you could sell the CD to customers while they listen to samples.) People really want more innovative ideas that fully utilize their broadband potential. Video rental sites could start showing trailers to the movies, or even sell the entire movie in QuickTime format for viewing on the computer.

As all these technologies blend together, the computers of today will become the hybrid communication/learning devices of tomorrow. Your customer will have a communication portal (device) and will expect you to supply such conveniences as interactive video, interactive video games, instant access to TV programs, on-line shopping and banking, the ability to work from home or to take courses, and instant access to music. Everything can be cross-blended with everything else. For example, while watching a show, the viewer could enter "interactive mode" and see items that are for sale on the show. The viewer could buy that jacket or lamp by clicking on it and adding it to a shopping cart. A quick press of a button and the customer can find out if the necessary funds exist in his or her account for the purchase. Starting to see the potential? The true winners are going to be companies that not only "get" the concept, but implement it well. In the above example, a partnership between a bank and a commerce site would have to be established. Customers wouldn't care about how the technology was achieved, but you can bet they would tell a friend if a site had the ability to cross-check the balance of their accounts.

What the broadband consumer is going to be looking for is not an interactive TV. We don't believe that interactive and TV go well together. A TV is a very passive pastime; people like to sit back and do nothing but let the TV entertain them. This is not to say that the TV won't have access to the Web. We just see it being accepted by the consumer as a means to access an unlimited amount of video entertainment sources. A computer, on the other hand, is considered more of an interactive device and is used as a tool for creation and information retrieval and manipulation, like helping with homework, estimating taxes, or getting a good bank loan.