Journey on the Information Superhighway : Simplicity for the Masses : The Focus Is on Making Interactive Services Cheaper, Easier to Use
Nobody wants to maneuver through a computer maze just to watch a movie. But if the builders of the information superhighway package their services well, using them will be easier than driving to the neighborhood video store.
Relatively few people use the interactive services that are already available because they are complicated, limited in capacity, costly--or just boring.
“So much of this information is around in written form now, but people don’t use it,” said Doug Patton, president of industrial design firm Patton Design in Irvine. “The focus should be on how new services can be used for greater simplicity, ease of use and personification of technology.”
Patton’s firm has developed several remote controls, including one for Time Warner Inc.’s test of interactive services later this year in Orlando, Fla.
Here are the main services that will be offered in Orange County this year and beyond. Some will be new; others will be packaged more conveniently.
MOVIES
Surveys show that movies on demand--being able to order any movie from a huge library and have it appear on a home screen instantaneously--will be the most popular service on interactive TV. Consumers will prefer to watch programs at their leisure rather than search through 500 channels.
Initial systems won’t offer instant service. However, Pacific Bell will test a concept, dubbed near-movies-on-demand, in Milpitas this spring in which it will air recent box office hits every half-hour. Customers will be able to tune to whichever channel starts showing the film at the time they prefer.
Cable companies and DirecTv, which plans to offer 150 channels by satellite, are intent on providing a similar service, designed as an alternative to renting movies from video stores.
A key to success will be keeping prices low, said analyst Bruce Ryon at Dataquest Inc. in San Jose. Surveys show that consumers don’t want to pay more than the $4 average video-store rental fee price or more than $20 a month for movies on demand.
VIDEO GAMES
Besides movies, video games seem to be a star attraction.
Most cable-TV stations will offer the Sega Channel when it debuts this year. The channel will allow home users to download games through their TV sets to their video-game systems.
Sega will test its service in 12 markets first to iron out its pricing structure. It will be available in Orange County and the rest of the nation this fall.
For perhaps $15.95 a month, subscribers could access $2,000 worth of games, said Tim Bajarin, chief analyst of Creative Strategies International, a multimedia consulting firm in San Jose.
At first, the Sega Channel will only make games available; it will not be interactive. Players won’t be able to compete with each other long distance, mainly because the technology is not widely available yet for games to be played without tedious delays.
Players can already square off on multiplayer networks such as Genie’s Air Warriors.
Johnny Wilson, editor of Computer Gaming World magazine in Anaheim Hills, regularly squares off on the Air Warrior multiplayer air combat game on his home computer. He has never met in person most of his fellow pilots, but he meets them in cyberspace via computer modem.
“The interaction between humans is where the games become interesting,” he said. “You’re playing against someone who is thinking. There are some phenomenal tele-communities on the networks. You even have the equivalent of roving gangs protecting their turf.”
ELECTRONIC COMMUNICATION
CompuServe and other on-line computer services have attracted more than 4 million subscribers nationwide, partly because of a feature known as electronic mail. Messages can be sent from one computer screen to another instantaneously, allowing people to correspond without using “snail mail,” or regular postal service.
Such communication appeals to many people who enjoy chatting with others far away under the anonymity of different “handles” used by citizens-band radio operators.
Others see the potential for taking part electronically in the democratic process by setting up, say, interactive school board meetings at which officials would receive and answer questions by E-mail.
By the middle of 1995, Pacific Bell will be offering videophone service to the first homes in Orange County on its new fiber-optic network. Their usefulness will be limited, however, until large numbers of people own them. Videophones are available now but send and receive their signals very slowly.
Federal regulations do not allow phone companies to provide video programming now, but several bills now moving through Congress would change the rules.
Cable-TV companies also have plans to offer videophone service once they upgrade their networks.
HOME SHOPPING
Shopping by television now is tedious--it can take hours for something to show up on the screen that the viewer might want to order.
But as screen navigation systems are developed and more channels are offered, viewers will eventually be able to peruse entire video catalogues at home.
Such service won’t be available for a few years until the networks have enough storage capacity for libraries of catalogues.
INTERACTIVE MEDIA
Thanks to Cable News Network and Headline News, viewers are accustomed to watching the latest events on TV around the clock. And America Online, a fast-growing on-line service with 600,000 subscribers, is already delivering the San Jose Mercury News to subscribers almost anywhere.
Eventually, viewers will be able to pause the evening newscast in mid-sentence and skip to the next story if they want; or pre-program the broadcast so that they receive only stories on a particular topic, such as finance or sports.
If such services can be offered at low prices, as advocates hope, almost everyone will be able to become a publisher.
David Scott Lewis, an Irvine resident and editor of an electronic magazine distributed on the worldwide computer network known as the Internet, hopes eventually to offer an electronic magazine with video images. Right now, the network can accommodate only text files and still pictures.
