TABLE OF CONTENTS This chapter provides information that will help you to understand the challenges, choose your tools, and then create interactive television geared toward a variety of devices.
As the slow burn of high-definition television (HDTV) adoption leaves some wondering whether mass acceptance of the big boxes might fizzle altogether, a much smaller type of box might end up stealing the show to become television's first real entry into the new digital economy. We're speaking, of course, about a new generation of set-top boxes, DVD players, and even game consoles that are or will be wired for interactive television (iTV). Informed more by the evolution of the Internet than the grand vistas of wide-screen Panavision, iTV is marrying the Web directly to conventional television for millions of viewers. Some form of interactive television is expected to reach more than 29 million households in the United States by 2005.
In this case, we're not talking about the kinds of modem-based Web television content that viewers have been enjoying for the past few years. Microsoft's WebTV with its proprietary set-top device that adapts Web content to the specific limitations of an interlaced television display while negotiating the switch between modem and TV transmissions has been an early echo of things to come. True interactive television involves a much tighter integration of digital broadcast and interactive browser-based technology. The hope for both content creators and content providers is that iTV will become a new...
