Ins and Outs: Whatever happened to iTV?
By Jeremy Toeman 
posted Sep 16th 2008 8:30PM
posted Sep 16th 2008 8:30PM
Jeremy Toeman contributes Ins and Outs, an opinion column on entertainment technology. He is also the founder and editor of LIVEdigitally.
Here we are in 2008, and while technology's come a long way, only the rich have home automation and most of the time they spend using it involves rebooting their house. When it comes to interactive television, however, the vision of watching TV and doing cool things like seeing real-time sports statistics, selecting alternate viewpoints, or playing an interactive game just hasn't come to any home I know of. The only major improvements to TV technologies in the past 15 years are: the mainstream availability of HDTV sets and programming, on-demand movie watching, and DVRs. And these improvements are all evolutionary ones, not a single bit revolutionary.
So why not? What happened to "iTV" as the insiders call it? Interestingly enough, I think it's already arrived, just not in the fashion we all hoped/expected it would. But I'll get to that in a moment, let's go through a quick bit of history just to get up to speed.
In the nineties, various companies tried numerous approaches to introducing iTV services. Solutions tended to require a new, advanced (and expensive) set-top box capable of rendering pretty interfaces, serving up new applications, and generally doing much of what a computer had to do. Every service required a cable provider (or occasionally ambitious telco) to run a trial program somewhere in the country (Orlando was apparently quite the hotspot for iTV trials). In some cases huge infrastructure was needed (such as wiring fiber optic cable from the cable head-end all the way to the home), as high speed Internet was just a vision on the industry's horizon. Suffice it to say they all failed, and at quite a cost as well.
Part of the problem had to do with timing. TVs were all standard definition, and displaying cool, interactive menus not only looked ugly, but required huge fonts just to be legible on a 23" WEGA. As I stated above, the Internet was dial-up at best, meaning very little data could actually get sent down the pipe. The embedded hardware platforms at the time had little processing power, and making an interactive application required custom (expensive) hardware and unique programming skills.
Another part of the problem is the closed nature of the industry. I spoke with Mitchell Kertzman, former Chairman and CEO of Liberate Technologies (once the top iTV technology vendor), to get his insight on the experience. Mitchell's feelings are that the very nature of the structure of the cable industry require that a vendor "sell" to a big cable provider, yet those companies are highly unlikely and unincented to make such a relationship really work. It can take months to years just to get in the door, and even then a multi-year trial is a first step at best. Considering the scale of operations for a company like Comcast or Time Warner, this certainly isn't unexpected; if you were responsible for providing TV to millions of homes, you would put some pretty big hoops up as well!
Looking back on the past few years, one would wonder why iTV hasn't attempted a resurgence. After all, we have beautiful HDTV displays, big fat Internet tubes, and fairly inexpensive yet powerful hardware. I'd argue the timing was fairly bad in actuality, as consumers were just learning about the evolutionary technologies, buying their plasmas and their DVRs. Launching even more new features could very possibly have wrecked the adoption curve of these other services, each of which are netting significant cash proceeds to big cable.
So now I'll go out on a limb and hypothesize that iTV the way it was once envisioned still isn't coming to a couch near you anytime soon (although there are huge players still trying). And it's not because the boxes are too expensive or confusing. It's not because the screen is too small or too big. It's not due to the overly stated "lean-forward/lean-backward" argument against interactivity in the living room. It's because interacting with TV is already here, and millions of people are already using it.
Tens of millions of Americans interact with their TV using their cell phone. They do it by texting in votes to American Idol and other shows. Every Sunday from September to January, traffic on fantasy sports Web sites spike to accommodate people checking their team stats during the games. Shows like NBC's Heroes have real-time interactive chat sessions online as new episodes air, and we should expect a lot more like this popping up this Fall season. Political and sporting events cause massive usage of microblogging services like Twitter.
The reality is interactive TV has arrived, we're just using our cell phones and laptops for the interaction, not the remote control. The television may be the last true "walled garden" in consumer technology, but the openness and flexibility of the Internet put the power to click back in the hands of the people. I don't know when I'm getting my laser raygun, but I do know the "information superhighway" has delivered the interactivity I first researched about over 15 years ago.
Do me a favor, go to the UK, sign up for Sky Digital (or Freesat or Freeview or Virgin Media), tune to any given program on the BBC and press the red button on the remote control.
Then come back and tell us again that iTV hasn't arrived.
iTV was here all along (with teletext,) it just never managed to work its way to the US.
What does this "red button" do?
It activates the interactive services "behind" the program. In the UK, the interactive services are quite robust and quite pervasive. News shows will offer real-time headlines with mini on-demand video updates. Live sports coverage will offer alternative camera angles, real-time stats and interactive polls and such. Even if the program doesn't have interactive features, the channel will be running constant interactive programming throughout.
Teletext (look it up on Wikipedia or something) did all this in a text-based fashion way back in the 1980s. Digital broadcasting (such as Sky Digital in the mid 90s and Freeview in the early 00s) brought rich graphics and video to the interactive mix.
Teletext is still pervasive throughout Europe.
No, DirecTV in the US has it as well. During the year they ran Passions on their exclusive channel you could answer trivia questions about the show using your remote while you watched the show.
But generally the US is just way behind or consumers could care less about it.
Or in Denmark the public service channels uses MHP tech (only on DVB-T) which actually shows an interactive guide with more. Take a look here: http://www.digi-tv.dk/images/TV-2-extra-1.jpg.
I'm not saying it's a fantastic service, just that Europe exist!
Yep, this is pretty much standard fare on DVB transmissions across Europe. During the Olympics, we had a choice of watching 5 different sports being broadcast at the same time by BBCi.
The downside is there's still no way to receive free-to-air terrestrial HD in the UK. At least not till 2012 D:
Wah? Was I supposed to read all of that?
Think about it. You walk into a video store, you see 8-Minute Abs sittin' there, there's 7-Minute Abs right beside it. Which one are you gonna pick, man?
But what about when somebody invents 6-Minute Abs?
lmao.well done, sir.
Easy. 2 minute abs on youtube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMWBLG4syRQ
iTV was last seen on TBS midnight special drama of the week with Gary Busey
where have you been, long time no comment! Glad to see you're still, uhh, Phanbouy.
You are clueless.
the arrival of the DVD, Time shifting, place shifting, automatically skipping commercials, Satellite based television, television on demand, and video on your cell phone (DVB) all arrived after your wrote your little paper, and none of it was forcast by you.
Because television didn't evolve the way you predicted it to, you think it's been evolutionary, vs. revolutionary. Give me a break. The fact I can call up my home server on my iphone and play a recorded show from the night before sans commercials is REVOLUTIONARY.
I don't think you understand what he is saying. Evolutionary technology is something that's developed as the next logical step, i.e. VCRs --> DVD recorders --> DVRs or regular tv movies --> ppv --> on demand. Revolutionary technology on the other hand, is something without a precedent that completely changes the way you do things, like watching alternate viewpoints of a game so you can decide what you want to pay closer attention to, not the broadcasters.
Don't be so quick to call someone clueless cause when it turns out you're the clueless one you just make yourself look stupid. If he wants to define something in a different way than you perceive things, it doesn't make him wrong.
So interactive graphics overlayed on TV is revolutionary, but having Tivo Desktop transcode a series for watching on my iPod is evolutionary? Seriously?
If you're looking for where interactive video went, well you're looking at it right now. All those flash animated videos on the web are exactly what you're talking about. Commercials with clickable ordering, telescoped ads, everything that might never/someday be rolled out in some limited form on your cable box as interactive advertising...
Seriously, anyone who thinks that the DVR is merely an evolution of the VCR and is not a revolution, is an idiot.
Yes, you can draw a line from one to the other, but the accumulation of small changes can produce a revolutionary change.
I'll agree that HDTV is an evolution, since it doesn't completely change the way people watch television. Once they get past the first few days of watching grass blow in the breeze on the Nature channel, that is.
That's a comcast remote...
rebranded as Time Warner?
Maybe I'm thinking Cox...did TW buy Cox? It looks really familiar..and I've never had TW.
Screw that, I want to know what happened to IPTV.
Uverse is IPTV, as is Verizon FiOS Video on Demand. There are also many IPTV providers throughout Europe and the far-east (Korea, Japan, Singapore, etc.)
Verizon has said they plan to transition to a full IPTV platform over FiOS within the next five years.
...specifically IPTV for the 360! i bought the friggen 120gb hdd because i planned on recording shows!
I stopped after reading that I couldn't get real-time sports stats while watching tv. I can and do on Directv with my Sunday Ticket.
Verizon FiOS TV has a remote with a similar layout too, but it's nicer and has backlighting. The STB remotes must all be made by the same company.
http://home.swbell.net/o1ooo1o/sling/fios.jpg
i really wish the numbers and the exit button lit up....
I'm pretty sure most remotes are made by Universal Electronics.
http://www.urcsupport.com/index.php
"the vision of watching TV and doing cool things like seeing real-time sports statistics, selecting alternate viewpoints, or playing an interactive game just hasn't come to any home I know of."
Real-time sports statistics- when I had Time Warner in Buffalo, NY, during the football season, you could select B on the remote and set up your fantasy football team, and get updates as the day went on.
Selecting Alternate Viewpoints- since the beginning of digital cable with Cablevison, they have offered what is called MSG Game Director (which is still in existance today, sorta). You had the ability to select different camera angles from home Knicks and Rangers game, though it was too slow to be useful, but it was an attempt none the less.
Playing an interactive game- Again, Cablevision does offer some sort of game package via IO digital cable, though I would never use it
In conclusion, all of those listed features DO exist in some form or another, but they just arent practicle enough to use on a daily basis.
I've got iTV from NEULION it's interesting. I get about 30 channels and it's a great picture. Slow to respond box though.
what happened to apple tv?
http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/shop_ipod/family/apple_tv?mco=MTE2NTk
thats what happened to it
Yea, right. The reviewer is indeed clueless. Both Europe and Japan have iTV solutions - the Japan one that I've tried is awesome. Looks great, and you can even buy stuff with it. Although I don't think that feature is implemented anywhere.
Also, with Media Center you can get extensibility apps that basically do the same thing as ITV. The sports portal, I think it is called. You can have scores for multiple games, etc.
Just cos your fancy tv provider wont do iTV things, doesn't make that the case in every country does it? as the first poster said - we've had all those features for years now! and for free on freeview! America isn't the only country in the world...
It was renamed to "Apple TV".
/comments
Haha. I did my senior thesis in college (in 1994) called "the future of the information superhighway" Sounds so stupid now
Here in Brazil, some channels have iTV features, such as music news and lyrics during TVZ (the music video show on top-rated cable network Multishow), 4-screen soccer matches, with your choice of audio, and even on-screen RSS-or-so from FOX News!!! (but... it's FOX News)
Yes...Fox News...don't you just love it!!! A television network that tells it like it is and doesn't promote the foolish and idiotic ideas of the liberals. Talk about lipstick on a pig. Obama is wearing much more than lipstick these days. For the record I'm not calling Obama a pig. But I do find it fitting that the mascot of the democratic party is a jack@$$.
In response to the reply posted by Dave:
1) He referenced Brazil. You know, one of the many nations outside of the United States?
2) Random political rants really lack style, you know?
3) You're most likely a droll troll, and I usually ignore your species. But I am tired tonight, so you earn a response.
As regards Viakenny's original post and everyone else's so far: It's interesting to hear how much these kinds of things have spread out in the world outside of the US, where I be. Thanks for that.
Not true. I can pull up real time (well, almost real time) NFL stats on my Sunday Ticket package. Plus, all the scrolls and sidebars, while not exactly interactive, certainly provide that kind of information,.When I watch a movie or sitcom, I can hit the "Info" button on my remote and get the cast and top-line crew as well as the year of production. And my on screen program guide (with one-touch recording) is perhaps the most useful form of ITV. I'll never use it, but DirecTV has about 25 Game Lounge channels offering me (for a fee) the same BeJeweled and FreeCell games I played on my computer 5 years ago. More significant is cooperative online and competitive gaming used by millions of people with networked PS3s, Wiis and XBoxes. Of course, I can always get much more information if I punch up IMDB or Wikipedia on my laptop, so who needs more ITV?
Home Automation only for the Rich? Check out Homeseer at http://www.homeseer.com
Also try Z-wave based devices. They cost as much as better X-10 products but use RF signals to reliable communicate. Works great for any sized house.
The innovative spirit seems to have died with the Time Warner QUBE service back in the late 1980s. However, before it disappeared from our memories, it gave us cable systems featuring a large number of channels (as many 60!) including premium movie networks, pay-per-view programming, infomercials, and special-interest channels (most notably MTV, and Nickelodeon were born from QUBE's "Sight on Sound" and "Pinwheel" channels).
It was a bi-directional system where (on the ten "Community" channels) subscribers would be asked to answer questions or polls using five buttons on their (very large, wired) remote. The results would be tabulated across the entire subscriber base in six seconds, and would then be shown live on screen in the program. News programs would ask for viewer feedback; pick-up football games would be broadcast where you got to select the next play; the home audience would decide the fate of the loser on a game show.
Here we sit, 31 years after that system launched in Columbus, OH (and then seven other cities); all of us with bi-directional cable boxes in our entertainment centers. Yet, with all our amazing technology, we still don't have anything (again) as cool as QUBE.
DISCLAIMER: I used to work at Liberate in the UK office.
iTV is certainly alive and kicking in a lot of European countries. In the UK alone there is the OpenTV platform running on Sky satellite services, limited (downstream-only) stuff on Freeview the free-to-air DVB-T system, and even some Liberate services running on cable networks.
However, it never reached the level we all hoped it would. I spent my time their trying to pursuade TV content originators to include iTV properties in their planning and budgeting process. The vision was that every show/programme would have an interactive element, using a real-time trigger carousel to dynamically change the interactive content to suite the video. Multichannel tuning seems to have survived well, but the only real trigger application seems to be the "hit the red button now for more info" prompt on ads.
*Sigh*
From the MNO perspective, I think the outlay just proved too much when combined with the difficulty of monetising the back-channel. It's just so much easier to use SMS to interact with your TV shows, and the monetisation of that channel is well-established (if subject to the occasional abuse). Looks like mobile won out over iTV.
Now I work in mobile...
:-)
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha Comcast hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha Interactive hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha Intelleigent
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
Remote control-based interactive services are indeed available in several markets throughout the world and via various providers. But availability doesn't mean success and long-term relevance. The point I take from this interesting article (and that I fully agree on) is the fact that focusing on remote-control or set-top box based interactivity is a waste of time as mobile and web alternatives are gaining ground.
Set-top boxes are evolving at a much slower pace then the two other main channels for TV interactivity and viewer participation - the mobile phone and the laptop. They evolve at 'internet speed', while set-top boxes have to be produced at low, low prices, with cost cutting applied to processing, communication and user input (how can you play a game with your family if you only have one remote?). People voluntarily get a new phone every 18 months, but a new TV and set-top box only every 5 years or so. An new set-top box is subsidized and still has to be shoved down their throat by the cable co. In contrast, people like browsing for phones, using them, play with them when they're bored, expressing themselves - the reason why there is 'engadget mobile', but not 'engadget set-top box'.
Look at interacative TV trials in the 80s and where we are now. Progress for sure, but compare that progress against progress in mobile and web during the same period and the trend is clear.
There was interactive television in the 70's. QUBE by Warner Cable was decades ahead of it's time. Check it out-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QUBE
Beat ya :)
Maybe people aren't clamoring for interactive TV because if they want real time statistics for sports, etc they can just open up their laptop and look at espn.com as you mentioned. Is a TV remote control really going to be nimble enough to give us all the information our short attention spans demand? Do we really want our screen cluttered (or shrunk down) to know that Kobe shot 10 for 30? I don't know who would want to have their 27 inch TV shrunk down to 24 because of a bar of stats that distract me from the game, anyhow.
So let me get this straight... these rabbit ear antennas I have will NOT work come next February, correct?
Wow... I kind of assumed that most developed countries provided these services on TV, the US especially. I have a rather outdated Sky box which is sluggish, and the extra interactive services are mostly useless to me anyway, though apparently NTL allows you to access BBC iPlayer through your TV, which is pretty nifty.
The basic problem with interactive TV services is that they are in fact NOT interactive. They are merely a more complex menu hidden behind what you are watching, with a few options to choose from. The communication is all however one-way. You broadcast nothing from your antenna. To my mind, interactivity implies some sort of two-way communication.
The net result is that so called 'interactive' TV services (i.e. those offered by the BBC) are simply boring. I am a tech geek and have barely ever used them, as they offer nothing to me. TV is something I watch when I want utter simplicity in my viewing experience, not a fuss of (slow) menus. I have never, in the 7 or 8 years that we have been able to "Press the red button and go INTERACTIVE" actually seen anyone do it. Ever.
Everything technology that contains "apple" in it, is revolutionary. Other fruit / vegetables are just evolutions
FYI
DirectTV's "SuperFan" package for football alows you to track your fantasy football starters.. You enter your lineup and there is a "popup" that lets you know about points yardage etc.
Wow, well said, and to think I thought we didn't agree on anything when it came to the TV industry -- other than plasmas rule that is.