Interactive Television

Interactive television (iTV) is a broadcasting innovation that promises to bring TV, the power of computing, and broadband Internet access together in ways that range far beyond the TV viewers' traditional choices of selecting channels, adjusting volume, and deciding whether to watch a broadcast, a videotape, or a DVD. ITV is a broad category of real and potential television applications in which the TV set can be used for exchanging email or chat messages, ordering pizzas or CDs, or accessing the World Wide Web, much in the same ways that people use computers. ITV also holds the promise of allowing viewers greater control over what they watch, how they choose to watch it, and when they choose to tune in.

ITV applications are accessed using a TV remote pointed at a special digital set-top box—a specialized computer containing both memory and microprocessors—that connects the TV to the Internet and processes and decodes digital television signals. More sophisticated set-top boxes contain hard drives that can store recorded TV shows, download software, and work with other digital TV services. There are also separate and less expensive services like TiVo and ReplayTV that can record, pause, and zap through unwanted TV commercials, even during live broadcasts.

However, while iTV holds tremendous promise, some perceive it as a serious threat to individual privacy. Set-top boxes can record and transmit back to the cable operator detailed records about TV viewing habits, demographics, and other personal information. Critics contend that this information could be sold to marketers and used to target viewers uniquely, or for other purposes, and some have suggested that laws may need to be changed in order to restrict the ways that media companies and marketers can exploit the information that they collect.

ITV has been fairly slow to take off in the United States, but it has been much more successful in the U.K. and in Western Europe. There are, however, numerous predictions holding that iTV applications will become tremendously popular in the United States by 2006—the year by which the U.S. television industry is required to switch to all-digital transmissions—and that as a result, set-top boxes could soon become the hub of all home networking, supplanting personal computers.