Digital TV: Boxing clever

In millions of homes across the UK the role of television is being changed. It's no longer a case of turn on, choose a channel and slump on the sofa.

More of us can now turn on to play games, get health advice, buy a pizza and watch a film on demand. The list of services available via the box is growing ever longer and we can do more with our TVs than ever before.

Anyone who has a digital set-top box plugged into their TV can access this brave new world.

In the future, using the TV will not be the passive activity it once was and interactivity will mean much more than simply shouting at the ref when he makes a bad decision.

It's possible to argue that Ceefax and Teletext were simple proto-websites, allowing users to access a range of news, sports and holiday information.

However, the latest services offer far more enticing possibilities. The ability to play simple computer games such as Tetris, access web pages and send email via the TV could even be taken as a sign that the long-heralded convergence between TV and computers is about to happen.

Terminal velocity

Jasper Smith, chief executive of Static, the company behind games channel PlayJam, said: "I think people are beginning to see the TV as a multimedia terminal; one that delivers a range of passive and non-passive services."

Kevin Walsh, chief executive of communications company Kingston Interactive, stressed that there are huge differences between TVs and multimedia web terminals. "The web is about information," he said. "This is about entertainment."

To some extent, there has already been an element of convergence because the set-top box that enables you to receive so many channels also has its own processing capabilities and memory.

Some of the set-top boxes of today, and certainly those of the future, contain a hard disk which can be used to store programmes.

It's the processor power inside the set-top box, combined with a return path (the ability to send a signal back to the broadcaster), that allows the public to indulge in a new range of TV pursuits.

At its simplest level, this might mean something such as voting via the TV. More than 35 per cent of the votes for the winner of Channel 4's Big Brother 2 last summer came via the remote controls of SkyDigital viewers.

There's also the possibility of a choice of commentaries. Digital satellite viewers who didn't like the more traditional narration of Walking With Beasts by Kenneth Branagh could opt for a more erudite commentary from the voice of Horizon's Dilly Barlow.

Interactivity can be used to provide more choice. At last year's Wimbledon Tennis Championships, the BBC broadcast a selection of five matches to digital satellite viewers who could switch between the games or watch them all on the same screen.

More than one million viewers used the service on the first day of the tournament. A similar operation providing coverage of the action at different holes during last year's Open golf tournament also proved popular.

Game on

One of the biggest draws in the interactive field has been games. NTL pointed out that games have been its most successful interactive offering, more so than news, weather, sport, travel and betting, while Sky has attempted to combine the popularity of computer games with the national sport as part of its new Sky Play game.

Launched last October and priced at £1.50 per go, it allows viewers to predict which player is likely to perform best or worst during a football game. They can also pick bonus periods when successful predictions gain extra points.

The highest scoring players pick up cash prizes and, although no figures on the number of users are available, Sky claims it gave away more than £100,000 in prize money between its launch and the end of 2001.

It is the more traditional games, however, that have proved most successful at persuading viewers to do more than just watch their TVs.

Sky has reported that more than half its digital subscribers have played games such as Trivial Pursuit and Battleship via the TV and that 3.7 million people have paid 50p to sample Tetris, the classic computer game. NTL also reported a strong uptake, with its network recording 1.2 million gaming sessions a month.

The popularity of gaming is such that there are now a number of dedicated channels; in addition to PlayJam, there's Sky Gamestar, Two Way TV and offerings from Cartoon Network and Fox Kids.

The limited capacity of the set-top box, however, means that many games on TV are more like board games than the graphical extravaganzas offered by consoles such as Sony's PlayStation 2.

It's also worth noting that most games are being offered on a pay-per-play basis, so every time you play, the cost is added to your phone bill.

Each game may only cost a matter of pence but just as early internet surfers found their phone bills inflated by online usage, interactive TV users could find the cost of regular gaming adding up quickly.

Our friends up north

Thanks to a quirk in telecoms history, the residents of Hull can subscribe to a highly interactive TV service. The town's local phone network never became part of BT and Kingston Communications has developed an extensive ADSL network capable of reaching 100,000 homes in the area.

Subscribers to the company's TV service can access the output of the five terrestrial channels, classic programmes and a mix of films or news-on-demand. The system has web-style pages that provide information, among which is an NHS page offering facts and information on various health related issues.

Local schools can even put up audio or video footage to show busy parents what their children have been up to.

Kingston's Walsh explained that the company is aiming to create a TV portal, in the same way that AOL has for PC users. The service has some web-like attributes in that it can carry advertising that no longer appears once a set number of consumers have taken up an offer.

Walsh claimed that the company's TV internet and email package has proved particularly popular with older customers who can't justify getting a PC but want to keep in touch with new developments and far-flung family members.

"It's not as good as PC internet because we are in the early days, limited by the memory in the set-top box. It's a bit like going back to a PC four or five years ago," he said.

One area where Kingston's service far outstrips the PC is in the level of data that can be sent across the system. Anyone watching news on demand receives up to 4.4Mbps, which is enough to make anyone struggling with a standard modem weep with envy.

The latest developments in interactivity also look at integrating TV and telephone services. It's now possible to meet like-minded individuals via the TV using Static's Yo-Yo service, which launched in December last year.

Participants submit a selection of personal details to create an on-screen profile. They can also call a telephone centre and record a 30-second voicemail message. Potential partners can then peruse this information before deciding if they want to make contact.

For residents in the Birmingham area, there's also the chance to use their TVs to shop at Iceland and Debenhams, and even to talk to a nurse as part of the new NHS InVision service.

A technology called iSeeTV, which links the right telephone call to the right TV set, also allows 50,000 Telewest subscribers to ring a call centre, turn to the appropriate channel and actually see the person with whom they are speaking.

Location is everything

Digital TV sets, which accounted for only four per cent of TV sales in 2001, offer free digital TV using digital terrestrial broadcasts. These are available now but there is a note of caution.

How interactive your TV set can be will vary according to where you live and which digital TV platform you've signed up to. As well as the issue of bandwidth (the amount of data that can be transmitted on each system), there are other complications.

Unlike the PC world, which is dominated by the Microsoft Windows operating system, there are a range of standards for set-top box software known as 'middleware'.

SkyDigital uses Open TV's software, for example, while NTL uses a system called Liberate. This can make it complicated for broadcasters to make new services available to all digital viewers at the same time.

Another key issue is the return path: the ability to send your commands back to the network operator. Cable TV and ADSL operations don't have a problem here but it isn't so easy for others using satellites, standard phone lines or terrestrial broadcasts.

The final question surrounding interactive TV is whether people will want to use it. Will we be willing to change our TV habits so that, rather than simply sitting around like the characters in The Royle Family, we become a nation of active TV participants?

The popularity of early interactive services suggests that we will but, like all changes to ingrained habits, it's going to take time before interactive TV becomes as much a part of our entertainment diet as EastEnders.

The future

If the prospect of meeting your dream partner via the TV sounds like a cheesy 1970s sci-fi film, rest assured that it will be a long time before interactive TV will infiltrate every facet of our lives.

Because we associate TV with entertainment, it's in this area that most of the early services are likely to be developed. This means that services such as video-on-demand and pay-per-play games are likely to be top of the agenda for some time.

Andrew Howells, managing director of interactive TV agency BMPtvi, explained that the games market is under increasing pressure to bring in revenue because the TV companies see it as a short- to medium-term way of making money, so this is one area that will be offered to the public.

Programmes are also being developed where interactivity is integrated into the script. In a travel show, for example, the presenter might ask a question and the viewers would be given multiple-choice options on-screen.

At the end of the show, the viewer who got the most questions right could win a prize. Discovery Channel viewers are already voting on who they think will win each edition of Mastermind at the half-way point of the show.

Applications that enable communication among discrete groups, such as Static's Yo-Yo dating service, are also tipped to do well although, given the cost of developing interactive TV applications, they need a potential audience of at least several hundred thousand to be commercially viable.

Initially, the prime audience for new services will be younger consumers, typically aged between 16 and 34, because the companies developing such applications believe they are more willing to interact via the TV.

JARGON BUSTER

ADSL Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line. A technology that converts a telephone line into a fast net connection - about 10 times quicker than a 56K modem.

Bandwidth In computing terms, a measure of the maximum amount of data that can be transferred over a connection at any one time.

Hard disk A high-capacity disk drive fitted in almost all PCs and used to store applications and the documents and files they create.

Mbps Megabytes per second. A measure of data transfer speed.

Ram Random Access Memory. A computer's temporary storage area, measured in megabytes.

Modem A device that enables two computers to communicate with each other over a telephone line. A modem is usually needed to connect to the internet.

Multimedia Hardware (such as your PC) or software that is capable of handling both video and sound.

Portal A website that offers a variety of services, such as news, weather reports, stock information, email and so on. The information may be personalised for your interests if you are registered.