Overview

In 1997, when this book was first printed, the media server technologies discussed and described were infants about ready to stand up and run. Between 1997 and 2001, with so many technological advances that have occurred, it is difficult to revisit why a development took the course it did and why others simply withered on the vine.

In the early-1990s, one expected venue was experiencing both its first definition and its epitaph. As hundreds of millions of dollars were being poured into a science fair project without a market, other technologies evolved. The results of those experiments, while not necessarily pleasant, became the fruits of the future for video content delivery.

As this book was being revised, this, the concluding chapter, seemed to be left hanging. Like the previous "legacy" chapter on Video-on-Demand, the vision of interactive television conveyed in 1997 needed some support, some emphasis that all was not lost. So with the prospect that history does have a tendency to repeat itself, read through the first five or six pages of this concluding chapter and think back upon the ideas and concepts that were left hanging like clinging chads on a Florida election ballot. The course could have gone either way with ITV but it stayed the course and is about to be revitalized, spurred by several technologies, and hyped by continuing interest from broadcasters, software companies, and content producers.

In May of 1995, the emerging video and media server industries had a lot to think about in...