Overview

In the fall of 1996, the uproar over Interactive Television had just about subsided, and that over the Internet had only begun. Video-on-demand delivered to the home had seen just about as much growth as it was going to see for quite some time. Direct to Home (DTH) satellite broadcasting was firmly planted and DTV was still only a promise.

The FCC's Christmas gift of December 24, 1996, would give the broadcast industry the impetus to truly start moving forward in its utilization of digital technology and video server applications. It was as though we knew our wake up call was just about to be heard!

All the while, we in the television industry were being forced to change the way we had been accustomed to thinking for so many years. There was now sufficient evidence to tell us that these new systems we were about to indulge in required understanding a relatively new form of connectivity and communications. For many broadcast professionals and technicians, networking was a strange new world. Less than a decade before, we had thought that networking applied only to computers. How quickly we forget that routing switcher control panels had been strung together that is, networked, for many years prior. We just hadn't put together the concepts of connecting nodes, branches, switched topologies and the like. Now, with packetized television on the horizon, we must reflect on some basics and apply them to our future.

The convergence of digital video and computer networking technologies is...