The Internet and TV因特网与电视？？Many people are w...

The Internet and TV

因特网与电视

Many people are watching spellbound^[1]as the Internet grows exponentially. What they often do not realize is that the Internet is not only a fascinating new interaction medium, but that it will completely dominate our society.

Previous generations knew books, newspapers, telephones and televisions. The first three were essential aids to life, two text-based, the third speech-based. Anyone who was denied access to them was disadvantaged in our society. The picture-based medium, television, helped to bring the world closer to home. But it condemned the viewer to passivity and has been more a hindrance than a help in aiding individuals to develop new skills and capabilities.

The Internet will unite all the traditional media and push them further. Most significantly, this is the first time that pictures will be used interactively for information, communication and development of skills. Even today, everyone who uses the web is able to catch a glimpse of the potential of the medium in this direction.

Our children will grow into a web generation. They won't log onto the Internet occasionally, but will be online all the time. Fortunately they will be significantly more active than the TV-dominated baby boom generation^[2]. Those who are denied access to the Internet completely or partially will be enormously disadvantaged. They will be lost in our digital society.

Obviously access will not be as it is today: slow, unstructured, available only through the computer. We will have intelligent tools for tapping undreamt-of possibilities. We can glimpse the beginning of these developments in many places. Shopping over the Internet of the future will be the obvious thing to do, regardless of whether the goods are ultimately delivered or fetched in person. Both the time-short and time-rich^[3]will love using the web in this way.

Regardless of whether you agree with our views, you should read on. It is important for every e-tailing and electronic-shopping strategy to understand in detail what dramatic changes the Internet will undergo in the next few years.

Anytime, Anywhere Access

Today "'interface" devices for the electronic world fall into three categories: telephone, PC and television. The telephone and the television were network-orientated devices from the beginning. They had a specific use: speech-based one-to-one communication on the one hand and picture-and-sound-based broadcasts on the other. The PC was initially a stand- alone calculating machine which was gradually networked and became a communication unit. It has been quite a long evolution. Douglas Englebart, the often unacknowledged forefather of the modern PC, not only invented the mouse, but as long ago as 1964 in his Stanford Research Institute, was propagating networking in its primitive forms. His early efforts were precursors of what we now call "hyperlinks" on the Internet. Interestingly even Apple^[4]founder, Steve Jobs, who copied much from Englebart and marketed it, did not take this aspect of communication between PCs very seriously at first.

With digitalization (still only partially achieved with the telephone and the television), the three categories, telephone, PC, and TV will merge. This does not mean that multifunctional devices will dominate the market place, although these are clearly possible. After all, a medium like the radio has not disappeared although the radio function has long been integrated into TV sets. For most of today' s radio listeners TV sets are inappropriate. Digitalization of all devices does mean, however, that new applications and functional extensions will be possible. Overall we see three far-reaching changes for Internet access and electronic shopping:

·the comeback of the television;

·an increase in mobile devices; and

·the growth of 'easy use' equipment.

Surrounding these elements of tomorrow's consumer infrastructure are a number of burning questions, e. g. who will provide the operating system which allows them to function？ And who will provide the Internet access to them？ Fortunately as an e-tailer you can wait and see.

The comeback of television

A debate has been going on for a long time about whether the PC or the television will win as a preferred method of access to the Internet.

A few years ago, a Japanese delegation visiting Silicon Valley^[5]asked Regis McKenna: "Which will win—the TV set or the PC？". "The microwave oven" was his stunning reply. We love it, because it not only underlines the fruitlessness of the discussion, but emphasises that—thanks to Moore's law^[6]—we will see many more unconventional Internet access devices. We discuss these in more detail below.

Still, television deserves some special attention. With digitalization, it is on a technological collision course with the PC and many people believe that this means that one device will have to go. A long and pointless discussion has begun about whether the greater functionality of the PC or the wider distribution, better graphics and greater ease of operation of the TV set will win through. Combination units are already on the market. So far they have not met with much success.

The reason is simple, the "egg-laying wool-producing milk-providing pig" is impractical. In the foreseeable future there will be a device with a keyboard which primarily specialises in communicating and processing information and which will be compact to a degree or even portable—let's call this a PC. There will be another device that is big, though no longer clumsy looking, that specialises in high-resolution graphics and films—let's simply call this a television. This television can have an infrared keyboard connected to it but usually it will be controlled with its simpler remote-control unit. You will be able to interchange the two units to a certain degree, but the so-called 'look and feel' is clearly optimised to one type of application.

The critical fact is. television is becoming suitable for the Internet. This trend cannot be stopped. Most new and some proven Internet content is strongly picture-based and therefore particularly suited to television. Accessing it will not require a keyboard just as videotext or programme guides do not. The ultimate breakthrough for TV as an Internet device will come with broadband connections. Interactive TV will embrace Internet content as an add-on to TV programmes.

For a long time it has been thought that video on demand (i. e. downloading films for payment), will be interactive TV's "killer application", i.e. the decisive buying-incentive for interactive television. Now it is clear that many people think that they would like video on demand but hardly anyone would pay for such a service at today's prices. Thus the so- called "full service networks' (FSN), based on this (such as Time-Warner's^[7]notorious attempt in Orlando) have all failed so far. The good news was that Time-Warner's FSN worked; the bad news was that it cost the company about ＄12, 000 per connected household.

It seems clear that an offer of a television including elements of so-called "lazy Interactivity" represents a sensible step forward. This provides:

·additional information windows: for example interrupting long-winded live broadcasts such as Oscar award-ceremonies, coronations, slow sports like golf or baseball, concerts with news

·'buy' buttons in advertising and events;

·direct voting capabilities; and

·interaction in live auctions.

These offers can be linked to a picture-in-picture segmentation or windows within the television screen. For example, users in the UK of Sky's digital TV offer will be familiar with the ability to change camera angles and call up player statistics while watching sporting events.

A big problem for TV-based Internet access today is still the lack of standardisation of the necessary set-top boxes. As consumers don't want to risk having to buy several of these boxes, many are playing a waiting game. Now PCs have become so cheap in the US that it will soon be possible, for under 400 dollars, to put a simple PC on the television set and to solve the rest of the problem with software.

The future for television as a medium is firm but the future for many television broadcasters is uncertain. Cable-TV players in some countries have got used to a pay-TV model. The advent of broad-band technology, allowing TV to be watched on the Internet threatens all this—as it becomes possible to charge subscription fees on the Internet.

Broadcast. com^[8], taken over by Yahoo^[9]in spring 1999, has shown what is possible on the web using streaming technology. Broadcast. com, amongst others, has acquired Internet rights for sports' broadcasts and is waiting for these to become accessible via TV sets at which point it will be in direct competition with traditional broadcasters.

For e-tailers and e-shopping suppliers this means that, within the foreseeable future, they will be able to reach the whole television-watching community. They will, of course, have competition from television broadcasters like home-shopping channel, which is moving the opposite way into the Internet. Note that as they prepare to migrate to TV, Internet sites must be adapted to be TV-acceptable with larger fonts, more pictures and navigable without a keyboard!

Notes

[1] spellbound: 人们处在一种痴迷的状态，观看着，着迷的。形容词作状语表示状态。e．g．He went home tired and sad.(他回到家，疲惫不堪，心情沮丧。)

[2] baby boom generation: 泛指出生率高的一代。

[3] time-short and time-rich: 时间紧的人和时间宝贵的人。

[4] Apple: Apple公司，美国的一家微型计算机公司，位于加利福尼亚的Cupertino,1976年4月1日由Steve Jobs和Steve Wozniak创建。

[5] Silicon Valley: 硅谷，美国加利福尼亚州森尼维附近圣克拉拉山谷内的一个地区。

[6] Moore's law: 摩尔定律。

[7] Time-Warner:(美国)时代华纳服务网站。

[8] Broadcast. com:. com域名，专用于商业的Internet域名。

[9] Yahoo: Yahoo网点，一个著名的Internet信息检索网点，由斯坦福大学David Filo和Jerry Yang开发而成，它的URL地址为：http：//www. yahoo. com/。

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