Now, just like years ago for consumer awareness of the internet, you have a similar growing and evolving consumer-awareness of advanced television, interactive television, and everything else that you can put under the general rubric of "digital television." People are hearing something about it. People understand pay-per-view, DVDs (they certainly understand DVDs), they want the TV Guide Channel -- preferably the one with the interactive program guide (IPG) and not the continuously-scrolling passive program guide (PPG) -- and they are beginning to crave the hundreds & hundreds of channels available via digital cable and digital satellite television. And they are beginning to understand more about "personal TV" and other interactive on-demand television capabilities. After the consumer group buying into digital cable and digital satellite, the group of consumers to watch are those folks who are building "Home Theaters" in their homes. Within that group, there is a niche group of cutting-edge folks who are really worth following if you want to see where the future may be going and to see what the demanding consumer may really want in the future: the niche group of "Home Theater PC" (HTPC) users who are constructing their own homebrew systems built around their personally-made build-it-yourself PC-TV PVR DVD boxes (many with huge video harddrive storage capacities) attached to or networked to TVs throughout the home, to large screen TVs, as well as to digital-picture quality televisions and monitors. For that niche group, they will build their own personal video recording & home theater movie jukeboxes with easy-to-use highly-configurable frontends because no else will build it or because whatever is available in stores is not good enough or is too expensive. But then there are still those folks who are ambivalent or even hostile against any change in television -- and there is nothing wrong with that since there are a lot of twenty-to-forty year-old TV sets still operating quite well in people's homes everywhere and many people are still having problems setting the date and the time on the ubiquitous VCRs found everywhere. Technology may move fast, but much of the real world moves just a tad slower. However, in many respects, it looks like we are where more and more people are beginning to matter-of-factly talk about and actually understand what is happening with interactive digital television. If you are in the business, then you are already working towards the further establishment of this "next revolution" for television (since the invention of color TV) and you are waiting for more of the world to catch up with this brave new television world.

If you are visiting these pages, then the chances are you are NOT clueless about digital television, advanced television, interactive television, set-top boxes, PC-TV, etc. You may be swimming easily through all of the advanced television technology as part of the growing vanguard school of advanced television watchers with an eye towards the future of television and who are being prodded onwards towards that future by both the slowly-growing economic market forces that are pushing digital television products onto the marketplace and also by the slowly-evolving grassroots consumer demand for better television that has instant on-demand consumer-satisfying capabilities. So, if you are visiting these pages, then you are most likely clued into the benefits of the future of on-demand television where you can instantly and interactively demand content that you want to watch and access right now.

Okay, some of you may be saying that's all nice about watching the growth of interactive digital television, but why this interest at all and what's the big deal with my interest in PC-TV boxes, set-top boxes, etc. Well, in addition to telling you that I have a life-long interest in the development of mass media and television, let me tell you about my personal "box" story. In a way it's somehow related to my interest in interactive television, digital television, advanced television, set-top boxes, PC-TV cards that go in PC boxes, and that warmly glowing entertainment box with the screen on the front known as the TV set. FYI, I'm a filipino born in the Philippines -- and three months after I was born, my parents and I flew to the USA. We took a TWA flight where a flight attendant, after noticing my mother didn't have a baby carrier, gave my mother a cardboard grocery BOX like the ones they use at military commissary stores for customer groceries. Mom thought the box was great since we were poor filipinos who didn't have a baby carrier. She took the blue baby blanket she was carrying me in, put the blanket in the open box, and that box became my baby carrier. (Imagine that, a box turned into an "on-demand" baby carrier!) Because of that, I tell people that I was imported and shipped in a box from the Philippines to the US. For those filipinos out there, that box was my "reverse balikbayan box." When a filipino goes home to the Philippines, he or she usually goes back home with a box of goodies including canned goods, towels, blankets, and old clothes. When you go back home to the Philippines, it's a called a balikbayan (returning home) and the box is called a balikbayan box. Well, that open-grocery-box-turned-into-a-baby-carrier, which my mom kept for the longest time, was my reverse balikbayan box (box for going to new home). Perhaps needless to say, I find boxes to be very interesting. Travelling babies sleeping in blue blankets may be carried in open boxes turned into make-shift baby carriers and TV entertainment may be delivered through boxes connected in some sort of fashion to TV sets.

So, if you are interested in these interactive entertainment boxes, then hang onto your hat and start clicking and reading the pages and information about interactive television, advanced television, digital television, enhanced television, new television, set-top boxes, PC-TV, and other related TV topics on the numerous pages that you will find here at Ruel.Net including the PC-TV Pages, the Set-Top Pages and the Interactive TV Top.Box.News.

Finally, a big THANK YOU to everyone who sent in email messages of appreciation and encouragement that I've received over the years from the many interactive digital television fans, from the many set-top and WebTV users, from the many PC-TV tuner card users, from the many TV watchers interested in advanced television, from the many people who actually work in the worldwide interactive television industry, and from the internet surfers who somehow stumbled onto this set of webpages. Thank you for visiting Ruel.Net.

Happy TV Watching!
Ruel

P.S.   You can click here for more of Ruel's comments on the future of TV.
 


P.S.S.   Oh, in case you are wondering, the PC-TV graphic at the top of the PC-TV pages is a picture of my little kitchen TV set sitting on top of an old XT PC that was sitting out in the garage. That PC-TV graphic is a representation of the merging of interactive technology and hardware from the PC world into the television world. FYI, and perhaps needless to say, my actual PC-TV system is a lot better than what you can see in that particular PC-TV graphic. And the animated Set-Top TV graphic at the top of the Set-Top Pages is a composition of a picture of one of my old and still reliable TV sets with a set-top box sitting on top plus a superimposed miniaturized TV screenshot of an early version of an actual page here at the Ruel.Net website. Also, the animated Ruel.Net icon that you will typically see over in the left-side blue column and at the bottom of the webpages here at Ruel.Net is a further miniaturization of the Set-Top TV graphic.

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Also Check Out:
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