TELEVISION. If you are visiting these webpages, then you most likely enjoy watching TV. I enjoy watching TV. Most people enjoy watching TV. TV is the most popular means of mass communications. TV is used for entertainment and for information. Now, you have the evolving development of interactive television, digital television, enhanced television, personal television, and other technological developments providing for an instant-access on-demand television. These advances are moving TV into a new exciting future. Everyone will eventually think of the new fancy extra functions as expected functions of television. It will all be seen as simply "TV" in the end. Television is the future and has always been the future of communications.

There were previous attempts in the 70s, 80s, and early 90s at implementing some form of interactive television in the past via special devices over cable television. Then you had another form of interactive television where people were prompted to push buttons on a telephone device to make purchase orders through a special telephone number. This is really what you have now with those 30-second commercials and 30-minute informercials that show 800 numbers and 900 numbers!

Then along came the internet and the world wide web. The internet took off and it was only a matter of time before someone thought about connecting television sets to the internet or somehow connecting consumer television-related behavior to some sort of internet-related immediate-response interactivity. The rise of the internet helped to bring about the viability of an "interactive television" beyond the typical and already existent channel-changing "interactivity." People will immediately respond to what they see on television by interactively accessing or requesting more information even if the interaction has be conducted outside the TV set. With the internet, you have the dramatic social development of the two-screen (PC screen and TV screen) telewebber phenomenon when people simultaneously watch TV and surf the internet at the same time -- and particularly when they respond to what they see on the TV by going to their PC devices to access corresponding information or to access a particular website mentioned on TV.

We are inching and moving closer to widespread consumer usage and overall consumer acceptance of a one-screen interactive TV for everyone. Just imagine everything coming through your TV where you have an on-demand choice as to what you want to watch and access -- plus an additional choice for everything else related to what you may be watching and accessing. You have to THINK TV and WATCH TV to understand the significant shift in emphasis from the PC to the TV for interactive or enhanced entertainment and communications. You have to be able shift (maybe back and forth) from being a "lean-to" PC USER to that of a "lean-back" TV VIEWER. "Lean-to" meaning leaning towards a PC monitor and "lean-back" meaning leaning back while watching a TV set.

These two sides make up the two sides of the argument as to whether to watch TV with interactivity. On the TV set-top box side, enhancements and interactive functions are being added to the TV set such as what you would find with a digital cable set-top box, a digital satellite set-top box, an UltimateTV, an AOLTV, or a TiVo provided in a ready-made fashion by your TV provider or bought at a retail store. On the other PC-TV side, you are installing a TV Tuner card on a PC to watch the TV on the PC -- and maybe even hooking up a TV set to the PC. On the TV set-top box side, you are already watching TV with the set-top box attached to the TV with some sort of interactivity thrown into the TV mix. On the PC-TV side, you have the PC-internet-surfing experience with the TV thrown into the PC mix. The two sides have different interfaces and different orientations. The division between the two sides represents the constant argument as to how much or how little interactivity to add to television. At one end you have the active "interactive" PC and at the other end you have TV "enhancements" to help consumers enjoy their passive TV watching. Which way do you "lean" or do you "lean back" and "lean to" at different times or simultaneously? You have the interactive television industry seeking to find the right mix somewhere between the two sides to enhance the TV experience. And then you have the consumer who is stuck in the middle with a remote control in hand. The consumer already has channel-changing "interactivity" -- what more will the consumer want and accept?

If you can see this shift and the two sides of the argument, then you will also see the merging or the intrusion of the hi-tech companies from the PC-oriented world moving onto the turf of the overall TV market. On the one hand, there are set-top boxes as the "convergence" products that link the TV to interactive on-demand choice of more TV entertainment and information. On the other hand, there are PCs and PC boxes disguised as entertainment console boxes with built-in PC-TV tuner cards bringing TV functions to the PC and somehow bringing the PC in a disguised fashion into the living room. Some foresee the PC becoming the TV. Some expect that everything will be put in the TV. Others expect the TV set to remain as a separate TV set and that you will need a separate set-top box. And still others say that you will have entertainment gateways. And then we get back to the folks who try to be a little bit ahead of the curve by tinkering with their PCs by installing TV Tuner cards (if you wanted to, you can now get cases for PCs to make the PCs look like fancy home audio-video electronics consoles that you would put in your home audio-video cabinet instead of looking like traditional desktop PCs.) In the end, you will have electronic boxes of sort somehow connected to or integrated with the "TV."

There will most likely be all of the above in the future (plus plain old regular television) if you understand how these products will be sold in the marketplace as components for people who want something off-the-shelf and if you also understand how people like to construct their own home entertainment systems -- console by console and part by part. For the home audio-video consumer, you already have consumers filling up their living room cabinets by inserting new electronics consoles to make up their home entertainment systems. Over on the PC side, you have consumers with their existing penchant for tinkering with and building their PC systems part by part with the inserting of TV Tuner cards and connecting other entertainment devices into what I would call "power PC-TV boxes." PC-TV or TV-PC systems may very well make a big impact as computer manufacturers adapt from making regular desktop PCs to making fashionable "living-room" PCs to be inserted into home video-audio systems. And then you will have the upgraded interactive digital descendents of cable / satellite TV boxes. These devices are either already in or are migrating to the "living room" and will become part of an overall interactive home consumer electronics entertainment system which either could be a simple standalone system or could be a complicated system sitting in a wall cabinet filled with other various audio-video electronic components.

Just think of your own existing "TV system." Perhaps the most basic system is the TV with an attached VCR box. Now transport those devices to the new world of digital television where you will have new digital TV sets and HDTV sets plus digital cable TV set-top boxes, digital satellite TV set-top boxes, and power PC-TV boxes (and there will be converters for those folks who want to hang on to their older analog TV sets). When you watch TV, you will have an interactive program guide telling you what is on TV, you may see interactive elements included with TV broadcasts such as on-screen clickable links, panels, and displays during the TV shows and TV commercials, and, if you want it, full-screen access to the internet. Throw in personal video recorder functions, video-on-demand, maybe a DVD player, maybe a videogame player, maybe even X10-like home networking functions (or even a TV "LAN" via a set-top gateway), and you will have a better way for watching TV. Or you can just watch plain old TV without the interactive features. There's more to it, but that's what it may all look like in the future.

In following and looking at the current developing evolution of television, the mission of this set of webpages is to: (1) provide free information, links, and news on PC-TV cards and systems for "Watching TV on your PC"; and (2) provide free information, links, and news on set-top boxes and other interactive TV devices for "Surfing the Internet on your TV." For PC-TV and TV Tuner cards that you install in your PC, go to the PC-TV Page. For Set-Top Boxes that you attach to your TV set, go to the Set-Top Page. For Interactive TV News, visit my annotated news links index known as the Interactive TV & Set-Top News Page which has been followed by both fans of interactive TV and people working in the developing interactive TV industry.

Enjoy and Thank You for Visiting!

Ruel

P.S.   You can click here to find out Who's Ruel?

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James K. Batten in "The First Months of Viewtron and What the Future Holds." (Electronic Publishing Plus, 1985)

Chris Crocker on the then early 1980s "Telecommunications Explosion" (Microcomputing, July 1984)

AOL president Bob Pittman on convergence at E3 Expo 2000 (PC World, May 11, 2000)

Nicholas Negroponte on asynchronous time-shifting and also "VCRs" of the future; that communications need not be comtemporaneous or in realtime. (Being Digital, 1995)

Marvin Cetron and Owen Davies on the usefulness of "Net Television." (Probable Tomorrows, 1997)

Anonymous writer writing about Ecommerce and TV. However, people do watch informercials and do go to the net for product information. Whether the content is commercial or not, the content may be watched by smaller more individualized audiences.

Craig R. Evans on how technology must be in place before deciding on what to watch. (Marketing Channels, 1994)

MCA-TV president Shelly Schwab on a "Revolution in Television." (The Information Highway, 1996)

Labels that actually said "Television Ready" were on the back of old radio sets from the 1920s to the 1950s. (Radio hobbyists messages from USENET, 1995) (Thanks also to Prof. Martin Sandman who used to work on those old radios as a youngster and who nowadays shakes his head at the so-called "HDTV Ready" displays when there is currently *NO* single official HDTV standard for the United States -- there are about eighteen different standards competing to be the single official standard)

Frances Cairncross on the future of interactive TV. (The Death of Distance: How the Communications Revolution Will Change Our Lives, 1997)