Interactive television, past, present, and future
How do you define “interactive television”? Even more difficult, how do you do so in such a way that separates theoretical or upcoming technology like t-commerce (being able to instantly buy a product being advertised) from more obvious and traditional forms of interaction, like changing channels or lowering the volume? This is the question facing many companies today as they try to bring television watching into the 21st century?One way in which providers are defining interactivity is by degree, from high to low. In the highest level of interactivity, viewers can actually affect the events onscreen. One example is the 2006-2007 Finnish television show Accidental Lovers, in which viewers sent text messages which determined the emotions of the main characters. Obviously, interactive television can include other mediums of communication, like a phone. This type of interactivity dates back to even the early 1990s, when the Danish show Hugo premiereda television video game which viewers controlled by phone.However, much of the potential of interactive television still remains untapped. Even the simple act of watching television could be changed by Panasonic’s Life Wall, a prototype technology which uses face recognition technology to project a screen on the wall that follows the viewer around a room. Types of interactivity which currently require a computer are soon expected to be included in the television set itself, such as the previously-mentioned t-commerce as well as websites and games that are related to live broadcasts.ActiveVideo Networks is one company which is currently developing “cloud-based” interactive television. Similar to “cloud computing,” this would allow developers to store information in a cloud which could be personalized to each viewer. In February, the company offered an interactive channel for the 2010 Winter Olympics, featuring a mosaic of video images through which users could access whatever specific information they wanted. This technology is changing all the time, and it will be exciting to see where it leads next.