Interactive TV Is Spreading Through Couch-Potato Land

Thousands of boxing fans tonight will have a chance to prove that they do, in fact, know more about the sweet science than a professional judge.

HBO is turning its “Boxing After Dark” show interactive, letting viewers score a middleweight championship fight with their remote controls. No prizes are involved, just bragging rights for those who prognosticate better than HBO’s veteran boxing judge, Harold Lederman.

The event is a good example of the momentum that’s slowly building among networks, advertisers, cable operators and satellite broadcasters in favor of interactive TV--the long-ballyhooed next big thing that’s yet to succeed in the market. These efforts are baby steps, but the difference now is that they’re really happening.

In scattered communities around the country, consumers can click on their remote controls to order products as they’re advertised, call up local weather and traffic reports, start a movie, play a game or check out a Web site related to the program that just aired. Others grab wireless keyboards and trade messages with friends about the shows they’re watching.

Viewers can’t do these things unless they have the right equipment, which in many cases means having a cable or satellite company that’s gung-ho about interactive services.

But the number of homes with that equipment is growing rapidly, with close to 3 million satellite, cable, WebTV Plus and AOLTV subscribers already getting some kind of interactive TV today. And as the potential audience rises, programmers are starting to line up to develop interactive shows and advertisements.

“I think you see a dramatic increase in interest,” said Daniel Levy of RespondTV, a San Francisco-based tech firm that helps companies deliver interactive programming. “Where we were trying to beat down their doors to wake them up to this stuff, now they’re coming to us.”

Levy made this observation Thursday at the annual Western Cable Show in the Los Angeles Convention Center, where the cable industry gathered to discuss technology, programming and business issues. Much of the show was devoted to interactive TV, but that’s been the case for years--there’s always more wishful thinking on display than proven technology.

The cable industry has been flirting with two-way services at least since 1977, when Warner Amex Cable Communications launched the ill-fated Qube interactive system in Columbus, Ohio. High costs ultimately scuttled that project, as they did a group of high-profile interactive TV experiments by cable and phone companies in the mid-1990s.

Now, the increasingly bitter fight between cable and satellite companies--and the burgeoning popularity of the Internet--is renewing interest in interactivity. Consumers are starting to see five different types of interactive services, most of which give them more control or choice over what they’re seeing on screen.

* Enhanced TV--More than 30 networks are adding to some or all of their shows hidden layers of text and graphics that viewers can summon with a click of their remote. These enhancements give viewers the chance to take part in polls, order merchandise, call up specific information or test their skills.

HBO’s interactive boxing show is one example. Produced with the help of Culver City-based Mixed Signals Technologies, the show lets viewers not only score the rounds electronically but also call up punch statistics and read background information on the fighters and their trainers.

To see the interactive elements, HBO subscribers will need a set-top box capable of displaying the WebTV Plus or AOLTV service. That’s because the enhancements are based on a standard format for interactivity that only those boxes can handle, at least at this point.

The most widespread form of enhanced TV in the U.S. is based on technology from Wink Communications Inc., which is in about 1 million DirecTV satellite receivers and, soon, seven of the leading cable operators’ set-top boxes. Adelphia Communications, the largest cable operator in Los Angeles, expects to make Wink a standard feature of its digital cable service.

Wink lets viewers personalize news, sports and weather broadcasts, letting them cut straight to the topics they’re interested in instead of waiting for the program to get around to them. For example, on the Weather Channel, a viewer can call up a local forecast instantly, or switch to the forecast for practically any other city with a few flicks of the thumb.

Allan Thygesen, a Wink vice president, said the enhancements have been simple and convenience-oriented, such as letting people summon a score or a stock quote. “We’re now actually at the point where people need to . . . develop more sophisticated applications,” he said.

Fox Television is eager to do just that with its regional sports networks, letting viewers call up replays, different camera angles and supplemental information synchronized with its shows. One holdup, though, is making sure that the satellite and cable operators can deliver the kind of experience Fox wants for its viewers, said Eric Shanks, vice president of enhanced programming.

* Video on Demand--All major cable operators are expected to give their customers an improved version of pay-per-view called video on demand, or VOD for short. This service lets viewers start movies whenever they please, then pause, rewind and fast-forward as if the movies were on tape.

The most aggressive roll-out of VOD in the Los Angeles area might come from AT&T;, which is testing it this month in Culver City and Westchester. The company expects to make VOD available to 800,000 homes by the end of 2001 and to all of its Southland customers by the end of 2002.

Cable operators are experimenting with an alternative approach, one that gives customers a powerful digital recorder that can store any kind of audio or video program. Set-top box manufacturer Scientific-Atlanta on Thursday announced that Time Warner Cable has already ordered an undisclosed quantity of next year’s model of set-top box, which builds a digital recorder into an interactive cable TV receiver.

* “Walled Gardens”--Cable operators seem less interested in letting their subscribers wander around the Web on TV than in providing easy access to a “walled garden” of locally oriented sites. For example, customers of Insight Communications in three Midwestern cities can call up restaurant menus, show times at local theaters, local government information and stories from selected newspapers.

* Games--Working with Mixed Signals, producers of several popular game shows have developed interactive versions that viewers with WebTV or AOLTV boxes can play along with, including “Jeopardy,” “Wheel of Fortune,” “To Tell the Truth” and “Family Feud.” In these games, viewers score points if they punch in the correct answers before the contestants on screen, then compete with other viewers for the top scores.

* Communications--E-mail, instant-messaging and chat are all starting to pop up on TV screens. For example, NBC has built a chat and messaging feature into the interactive version of its teen-oriented Saturday morning programs.