Interactive Television

It is a reasonable question to ask exactly what this interactive television is and does it have any relationship to multimedia education. Here is what we can tell you. This may not be too satisfying, but there is no standard definition of what is meant by interactive television. It does mean that the device we are talking about is a television that sits at least 6 feet away from you and a set top box. The set top box with its remote may be viewed as the control computer for the display device which is the television. Using a remote, a user can send information to the set-top box and based on the connectivity you have set up, this information will be processed locally or remotely and something will happen.

Some people have another name that interactive television may go by. This is enhanced television. We think that this is more of an umbrella term applying to every application that goes beyond the common every day television we have had for the last 50 years. Other people claim that enhanced television refers only to applications whose video streams have added a small amount of content in the vertical blanking interval that every video that is displayed on the television screen has.. In this case, almost every television application is enhanced since almost every television application has closed captioning. Some people call enhanced television one that has an enhanced online program guide. This would certainly be nice, but only indirectly relates to multimedia education. We suppose if you could interactively search this guide for educational programs then this might apply.

Microsoft and AOL say that their devices that work with televisions, WebTV and AOLTV make television interactive. With these devices, you can surf a limited amount of specially prepared Web pages and can access some special image and graphical overlays on some limited number of TV shows which allow you to do things like vote, play games and get additional information about a topic on the TV show. These devices and these possibilities do indicate some possibilities for multimedia education. Clearly getting additional information interactively on a news show or Discover program can be educational. Clearly being able to get some Web access for a couple hundred dollars instead of 5 or 600 dollars allows some families to get Web access where they would otherwise not be able. Some of us may be involved in the next few years in actually creating interactive content that overlays and works with existing programs. Microsoft's developer's WebTV site gives good details on how to do this as well as more references. Commands look like HTML with a special attribute of TV.

Go To Page: 1 2

Articles in this Topic    Discussions in this Topic