I wonder where accessibility fits into this picture?


January 4, 1999
Ready to Interact With TV?
 A host of firms plan to roll out products soon that aim to give viewers a
bigger role in watching the tube. Their goal: Personalize the experience.
By JENNIFER OLDHAM, Times Staff Writer

Propelled by the introduction of broadcast digital television in the top
U.S. markets last fall and the coming of digital cable systems, interactive
TV is poised to move from regional experiments into living rooms across the
nation this year.
     Products and services that allow consumers to personalize their TV
experience will provide much of the buzz at this week's Consumer
Electronics Show in Las Vegas. CES will see a raft of announcements by
software and hardware suppliers racing to form partnerships and release
interactive-TV products.
     Interactive-TV services allow viewers to use their remote controls or
wireless keyboards to get more information during a broadcast or to treat
their TVs somewhat like a substitute computer monitor to get e-mail and
surf the Web. For example, a viewer might be able to get profiles of
players while watching a soccer match by pressing a button on the remote.
     Set to debut this year are TVs with software built in that allow
viewers to interact with their TVs without needing a set-top box, and
VCR-like boxes that record programs and save them to an internal hard disk,
rather than tape, for later viewing. In some markets, consumers will be
able to test-drive interactive TV by using digital set-top boxes from their
cable company.
     In addition, satellite TV providers are beefing up their digital
offerings this year with advanced interactive services such as EchoStar
Communications' recent partnership with OpenTV. EchoStar plans to use
OpenTV's software this summer to provide specialized weather forecasts and
other services such as home banking to its 1.6 million subscribers.
     Analysts expect the number of subscribers to interactive-TV services
to more than triple this year, from about 400,000 in 1998 to about 1.3
million. Digital cable services will hold about a third of this market,
with analog cable hosting 200,000 subscribers and non-cable devices serving
about 700,000.
     This is still a tiny slice of the TV audience in the U.S. In the next
few years, however, interactive TV will be introduced to more than half the
100 million TV homes across the nation as cable operators build out their
digital networks.
     "If it works the way we think it will, we'll see a substantial
percentage of the U.S. population that will have access to digital
interactive networks in 1999," said Steve Necessary, vice president of
marketing for Atlanta-based Scientific Atlanta, a provider of
communications networks and set-top boxes. "It will be toward the second
half of the year when we'll see the second wave of services like video on
demand or e-mail coming into the home on these platforms."
     A consumer doesn't have to have a digital TV to get electronic
programming guides, video on demand and other services. Analog systems and
services that aren't delivered through a cable provider, such as those
offered by TiVo Inc., will also be available.
     "There will be a lot of different applications, like gaming and video
on demand. But a lot of people have a false impression that we're only
talking about sitting down at TV and surfing the Internet," said Randy
Littleson, vice president and general manager of Spyglass Inc., which makes
software that allows interactive-TV applications to run on set-top boxes.
"I don't think that will be the winning paradigm. It's ultimately about
adding value to the existing experience. Those that figure out how to do
that first will be the ultimate winners."
     The real fight will be to determine who will ultimately provide
interactive TV, or be the gatekeeper, for the consumer, said Josh Bernoff,
an analyst with Forrester Research Inc., a Boston-based market research
firm. Cable operators will act as gatekeepers initially, although they will
delegate a lot of this power to service providers such as WebTV Networks
Inc., Wink Communications Inc., @Home Corp. and WorldGate Communications Inc.
     Also at stake is how these services will be delivered to the home,
whether via cable, satellite, traditional analog services, phone company or
non-cable service.
     As one of the pioneers of interactive TV, Microsoft Corp.'s WebTV is a
leading contender to act as a gatekeeper for interactive-television
services. WebTV has seen its subscriber base surge to about 700,000 in 1998
from approximately 200,000 at the end of 1997. Microsoft has licensed its
WebTV software to Scientific Atlanta for use in the company's next
generation of digital set-top boxes. Scientific Atlanta, one of two major
set-top box manufacturers in the U.S., can either use WebTV's content or
create a range of software options for each customer. WebTV hopes
agreements such as these will help its platform reach a wider audience.
     Also jockeying for viewers' attention will be personalized TV provider
TiVo. Early this year, it will offer two versions of its set-top box
directly to consumers. One version can store a minimum of six hours of
programming and will be priced at $300 to $500; a second model that holds a
minimum of 20 hours of programming is expected to retail for less than
$1,000.
     Users plug this box in between the TV and antenna, cable box or
satellite dish. Services provided through the box for a monthly fee of less
than $10 include a programming guide that's updated each night when the box
dials into a TiVo database. Viewers can use the guide to program the box to
record their favorite shows.
     A hard disk in the box also remembers a viewer's preferences--which
the viewer indicates by clicking on thumbs-up or thumbs-down buttons on the
remote during a show. Each day the viewer receives a list of shows for that
day that includes their choices, plus other shows TiVo suggests based on
the viewer's preferences.
     The TiVo system also allows viewers to pause, rewind and run in slow
motion any live-action broadcast. TiVo executives hope to eventually
license their technology to set-top box or TV manufacturers to embed inside
their products.
     "We're trying to marry the computer and the TV in a way that enriches
the TV experience for the TV viewer and hides the complexity," said Michael
Ramsay, president and chief executive.
     Another potential service provider for interactive programming is New
York-based ACTV Inc. Cable subscribers with digital cable boxes in Los
Angeles will be able to personalize their sports viewing experience when
ACTV rolls out its service here this year.
     ACTV has an agreement with General Instrument Corp. to incorporate its
software into the company's set-top boxes. The service allows viewers to
press a button on their remote to choose a camera angle for watching a
sporting event.
     Viewers can also request instant replays, statistics on each event and
player profiles. ACTV will provide its service in Los Angeles using
programming from Fox Sports West.
     Although it's concentrating on sports programming now, the company
hopes to branch into other areas once digital cable and digital TV are more
widespread.
     An area of particular interest to ACTV Chairman and Chief Executive
Bill Samuels is educational programming. For example, "Sesame Street's" Big
Bird could help a child solve math problems and then reward him or her for
the right answers by letting the child change his color.
     "What you see and hear on TV is totally individualized and yet it's
regular TV," Samuels said. "So for prerecorded programming, this means
programmers could do totally individualized instruction over the air, which
has tremendous implications for educators."
     Wink Communications, which sells products that allow broadcasters to
add interactivity to their programming as well as software that allows data
to be viewed on set-top boxes, has licensed its technology to several
television manufacturers.
     Last month, Toshiba Corp. released three analog TV sets--ranging from
36 to 55 inches wide--with Wink technology that allows consumers to
interact with programming developed by broadcasters that have partnership
arrangements with Wink.
     In Las Vegas this week, Wink will announce partnerships with TV
manufacturers that plan to design Wink-enabled TVs for the U.S. market,
said Michael Baehr, director of communications at the Alameda, Calif.-based
start-up. WebTV is also collaborating with Thomson Consumer Electronics to
install its platform in Thomson's TVs.
     Industry watchers agree that no matter how many alliances software and
hardware suppliers sign, content providers won't be able to accurately
determine exactly what services consumers want until the infrastructure is
firmly in place to distribute interactive TV.
     "The critical component missing in the alliances with hardware and
software providers is content," said Jeff Craig, vice president of
interactive technology at the Discovery Channel. "We don't know what the
real revenue model is yet. We're going to spend the majority of 1999
experimenting and doing research."

_ _ _

     Times staff writer Jennifer Oldham can be reached via e-mail at
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