Cable TV & PC Convergence
Here's a topic that came up in a discussion after the Newark (Secaucus) DevDays...and an explanation about why I'm writing this....
I'll be the first to admit I've been having a bit of the blogger's block lately, with outside activities taking over ( rehearsals, rehearsals, rehearsals, article deadlines looming in the future, and that work thing that pays the bills and keeps me honest :) ), so I thought I'd visit a topic that's been on my mind lately with the advent of obese client Longhorn apps.
This article (PCQuest.com) touches upon some of the 90s way of thinking, with convergence hardware just over the horizon like that dangling carrot that just doesn't get much closer. The problem with that way of thinking was that it was too focused on getting the TV to act more like a pc. The real convergence gains are to be made though getting a PC to act as a TV, but with additional content that just isn't possible with the push model. Interactive TV services start to touch on this, but with the wrong actions in focus. iTV models tend to gravitate around getting ads to pay for the service to the user, and not providing a compelling reason to expend the energy a) to get Mort to learn how to use the system b) to get Joe Jock to get a new gadget and c) to get Einstein to use a dumbed down pc that restricts what he really wants to do (insert rant about the broadcast flag here).
Fast forward to aught-zero and aught-one when the e-conomy collapsed, and who wants to burn venture capital on eGadgets and iToys when people are struggling to hold onto or even get jobs. The closest thing from that era was actually from the boom-era, and waned and died a slow death. Actually this seems to have been such a pariah in fact that a search in google yields nothing about the service. The software that I am referring to is Intel's Intellicast. This little diamond-in-the-rough from dial-up days allowed you to pull selected content, as web sites, off of the cable system. Yes, the very technology that lets you configure your vcr's clock over public access and public broadcasting network channels also transmitted loads of internet sites. This was still push content, but it was getting closer to the bidirectional goodness that we know and love as cable modem service today.
I'll skip over the widespread acceptance of broadband technologies, such as cable modem, DSL, and internet-over-power (see Cincinnati), and get to my point. Here's my vision for future convergent systems.
I can see the utilization of push-model “inter“net services, and the current bidirectional systems in a sort of strange synergy. Imagine a TV tied to a pc (just a grander scale monitor, really), such as the Media Center PC's around now. Longhorn MCE is running on it, with a cable connection to the tuner. The user clicks on CNNHN or Bloomberg or ESPN, and while the video is playing, a small progress bar goes across the bottom stating that an Obese client is being installed into the TV Programs folder. Since 1 and 2 Terabyte harddisks are commonplace, we have no issue with saving the currently watched TV show, along with tons of extra data and links related. The download finishes getting pushed, and the enduser can click the “Run Enhanced TV“ button on their remote. CNN is currently showing a chef cooking their specialty in about 90% of the screen, with instructions shown on the right.
The user can of course pause and rewind like today's tivo systems, but also has the option to continue non-broadcast segments. Don't you just hate when you're watching a news segment, and they have to cut away to finish the real news? Imagine a system that ignored the push-model tv show, and let that segment continue until the interviewee got their last point across. Sure this will take some more width on the pipe, but pushing hardware to the limits pushes new innovation at the same time.
Technically all of this would be possible through a push model to get the initial client, and then a push/pull model to drive the extended client.