Set-top boxes are about to revolutionise the way we “consume” television by making it more interactive
David Shapshak
When Bill Gates famously ignored the Internet until his equally famous turnaround that propelled Microsoft into its current leading position in numerous Net technologies he thought the next big thing was going to be interactive television.
Despite the gains made in our lives by technologies from the personal computer to the cellphone, the TV is still the foremost form of entertainment (witness the DVD boom), sport (a never-ending boom) and news (as September 11 demonstrated). TV sets are ubiquitous and for a large proportion of the population are their primary source of these three.
In many ways your TV is the centre of the home. Most lounges are arranged around the “tube” and many families eat their evening meals in front of it.
“TV is a trusted medium and it plays an integral part in people’s lives. The medium itself is still a primary brand and awareness-building medium,” says Jonah Naidoo, general manager of Multichoice’s interactive division. It has a strong impact, viewers are comfortable with using a remote control and it gives consumers control and convenience, he says.
What’s more it is also the main source of brand awareness in home appliances themselves, says LG South Africa’s marketing manager John Shaw. So whatever TV you own is likely to be the first electronics brand you’d associate with.
It’s a powerful combination of factors that would clearly have been seen as the next big thing before the unprecedented explosion that the Internet produced in the last half of the last decade.
But the television, and specifically interactivity with it, is back in vogue. And this time it’s unlikely that another revolution will distract interest away from it although the mobile internet is as big a “next big thing”, there is sufficient momentum in both fields to get both rolling.
This is especially likely as there are about 6,3-million TV sets in South Africa, according to an AMPS survey.
While the actual TV technology is exponentially increasing flat screens with greater clarity, powered by higher resolution digital broadcasting techniques and slim plasma screens are on their way, becoming more affordable the focus is on what’s being called set-top boxes. Gates was particularly interested in these devices, which are aimed at capitalising on the TV’s primacy and making it more interactive, adding some functionality from both a computer (sending and receiving e-mail) and hi-fi (downloading and playing music), as well as traditional audiovisual entertainment like movies or pop videos.
Prince among these is the personal video recorder (PVR), a combination satellite decoder and recording device that allows for remarkable real-time functions such as “pausing” live transmissions while you leave the room, or recording movies in broadcast quality.
The PVR achieves this through a combination of two conventional technologies: satellite decoders and the sturdy storage-intensive hard drive used in every computer. Instead of “taping” the movie you want on a video cassette recorder, the PVR writes the film to its hard drive.
Multichoice Africa, the parent company of satellite service DStv, will release these next-generation devices in early 2003. To begin educating South African users, and perhaps to wait for greater uptake to bring prices down, Multichoice will introduce Interactive TV early next year using the current decoder models. First up are: TV-mail the ability to receive, read and send e-mail (using an add-on modem); TV-shopping a kind of sophisticated catalogue shopping; and an advanced TV guide, known as an extended electronic programme guide .
It is the “dawn of a new era” says Multichoice’s strategy manager Phil Nicholson. “The PVR will have the same effect on TV and the way it will be consumed as did the advent of digital TV.”
Indeed it could. While he distinguishes between the products they are launching with and possibilities further on, the PVR will have about “10 hours of digital recording through its hard drive and later in 2003 the ability to hook two TVs to the box, while recording a third [channel]”.
The examples of what is possible are best illustrated with sport still the most widely consumed TV offering in the world. So, if you need to leave a game of rugby to go to the toilet or get a beer from the fridge, you can “pause” the game and take up where you left off.
What the PVR will be doing is “time shifting,” or recording in the background, seamless to the user, who just presses “play” when returning to the couch. “Because it is recorded material, you can also fast forward,” Nicholson says.
This functionality is separate to the 10 hours of recording that you’ll be able to store. Because of its digital nature and the electronic programme guide, you will be able to set your PVR to record regular favourites, say ER every Monday night, or something you see coming up in a month.
Also known as digital video recorders, these devices are popular in the United States where there are three main players: TiVO, Replay and Microsoft’s UltimateTV.
While with these devices, and the popular one from UK pay channel BskyB, you can watch one channel and at the same time record another. What the Multichoice device will offer that neither of these can, says Nicholson, is being able to watch two separate channels on different TV sets that is to send out two separate signals.
In the PVR’s first phase of release in 2003, you’ll have pretty standard VCR functionality, the ability to fast forward or use slow motion with video, have instant replay and insert bookmarks, such as “bookmarking” a spectacular goal.
But it will also let you watch a variety of movies on demand, which will “trickle” down, or be broadcast, during the less busy hours in the early morning and will probably change monthly. These will be pay-per-view, but because they are on the PVR already you can watch the film at your convenience.
This trickle-down method would also be very useful for downloading music in the popular MP3 format, and Multichoice’s first PVR, with a 40 gigabytes hard drive, will feature two of the ubiquitous USB ports that most MP3 players use to upload their music.
Cellphone maker Nokia is also weighing in with its Nokia Media Terminal home entertainment terminal, which will be a set-top box of similar nature, but is based more on a PC and runs the free operating system Linux. It is essentially a digital TV receiver, digital video recorder, Internet terminal, games console, MP3 device and online shopping tool all in one box.
Software giant Microsoft has it’s own set-top box software, WebTV, which has been used in Sony and Philips STBs in the United States since 1996.
No wonder then that by 2005 Forrester Research believes the uptake will be 15-million PVRs globally. Nicholson adds, quoting figures from Durlacher, that PVR penetration in the UK, for instance, will rank close to colour TV in the first 10 years. In South Africa there were 528 000 DStv decoders in use by September 2001.
For now, the initial three interactive TV services will begin familiarising users with the “return path” or the ability to send information back, as opposed to the one-way download path of the satellite signal.
This will be made possible through a very well-designed modem, which will be connected to the decoder and will dial-up, manually only, when you want to check, send or reply to your e-mail, or send through a shopping order.
A stand-alone, wireless keyboard is available for typing e-mails but the interface partly honed by South Africa’s premier usability firm, Interface is not unlike that of the current DStv menu. It also has an onscreen keyboard that you can use the remote to “type” with.
The e-mail has very basic functionality, says Naidoo, but “we’ve spent a lot of time making it look good for TV”. Managed by sister company M-Web so you’ll need an M-Web account it is aimed at families and has one primary and four secondary accounts. Because of the lower resolution than computer monitors and for the operating system requirements, it will not handle attachments.
The TV shopping will launch with popular items like CD, DVD and tickets, all from established retailers who are already online with M-Web’s shopping zone.
Nicholson says they have made the functionality as simple as possible to make it easy to teach people to use it. The interface is very similar to that of DStv with a selectable list of content, while the PVR menu will have one-touch functions like pressing R to record when in the electronic programme guide.
Because of the interactivity you can now search this expanded version by a variety of indexes: the names of films, by day, or by genre such as comedy or action.
While all these services don’t come cheap “it’s expensive to be a pioneer, so we’re following BskyB’s route”, says Multichoice corporate affairs general manager Lebogang Hashatse they will begin to realise the next generation of interactivity.
Bill Gates, although pushing his own system, would be proud.