Interactive television

Since its earliest days, television (TV) has been the perfect example of passive entertainment. Now some are trying to change that. Media and entertainment companies plan new interactive services designed to make television a centre of games, information and family activity. Many of these services are enhancements of regular programming – like displaying several football games at once. Some will be new ways of doing old things, like video on demand (VOD), which allows viewers to choose which movie they will watch. Perhaps one of the most intriguing is personal video recording, which lets them pause and fast-forward TV programs. This is not the first time that the television industry has attempted to persuade viewers to become more active. In the 1970s, a project to provide movies to order was shelved because of the high cost of bringing two-way networks into people’s homes. The television industry has some advantages which did not exist when previous experiments were undertaken. First, cable and satellite television now reach a large number of homes. Second, the Internet has made most people in the developed world familiar with the process of pointing and clicking. In a sense, interactive television is a way of bringing television a little closer to the Internet.