And Mr Laven is by no means alone.”The next five years, most TV will be just a mutation of existing TV,” says Patrick McGarvey, senior new media business analyst at Datamonitor. In fact, getting customers used to any form of interactivity is going to be a hard slog. “One problem is going to be turning what is essentially a passive medium into an active one. Interactive services will be accepted over time by younger people as they move on and grow up, but it will be a slow process.”David Docherty, the BBC’s recently appointed director of television, thinks customers will be interested in more channels and new services “I don’t think anyone will take to “digital” as such. “We have been told about all sorts of things people will be able to do eventually with interactive television. Change the ending of a play, look at a scene from different camera angles, vote and so on.
The advantage over the Internet? You get prettier pictures more quickly and you get them in your sitting-room. Apart from that, not a lot.Many TV distributors, especially the American cable companies, have tried more sophisticated systems but interactivity has thus far failed to sell. Phil Laven, technical director of the European Broadcasting Union, is a technophile through and through, but he too has doubts. The graphics will be sent by satellite while the text-based information will be delivered by a telephone cable connected to the back of your set- top box. So you push the button and your modem dials out and tells BIB that you are interested a product and in the post two days later is your shiny brochure.This is not the information superhighway but rather a strange hybrid world.
They will be able to register their interest in all sorts of things,” says Chris Townsend, acting commercial director of BIB.Much of this limited interactivity will be common across terrestrial, satellite and cable. The TV programme you will see on the screen is just part of a vast data stream. Your set-top box will descramble it and display just the pictures and sound of the channel you want to watch. But buried in the picture data will be more data that says “if the consumer presses button B jump to this bit of data”. “People will be able to respond to an advertisement, to order a brochure or book a telephone call to get a response or they will be able to request a test drive for a car. What is certain is the box will contain a powerful processor and a modem to allow you to communicate with BIB However, BIB is not a charity.
The cost of the subsidy will be recouped by charging service providers to use the system.BIB plans to offer games, magazines and an interactive wonder world. Four companies have been given exclusive licences to manufacture the boxes to the same, tightly controlled design So far, specifications have not been released. Next summer, for roughly the same price, you will be able to receive around 30 channels from your existing rooftop aerial. As for cable TV – probably the creme de la creme of our digital future – well, you might have to wait another year or more. Digital TV will deliver excellent pictures, in wide-screen cinema style and with CD-quality sound. It will also allow you to make instant purchases and sensibly navigate what could be hundreds of programmes.
BSkyB has the most to win or lose from digital TV.