Re: UKNM: DTV Industry: Is There One?

[Sean Clark]

Sorry to pipe up late on this one. It's hard for me to keep up with 

discussions at the moment!


A few views:


In my opinion DTV will be very big. In fact I'd go as far as saying that 

it will become one of the "viewing public's" primary means of accessing 

on-line services within two to five years.


EPGs (Electronic Programme Guides) will be the search engines/portals of 

future - just like search engines/portals, they will be branded, host 

adverts and act as your "personal gateway" to all things on-line. When 

will we see the first Yahoo/Excite branded EPG?


If you look at DTV and say, "where's the Internet access?", "where's the 

interactivity?" then you're missing the point. At the moment it's all 

about getting these boxes in people's homes. And for the mass market it's 

TV that has the appeal, not the promise of Internet. Interactive 

services, then Internet will follow when the installed base is high 

enough.


When the Internet *is* available via DTV don't expect to be "browsing" 

bog-standard Web pages and typing things into text based search engines. 

For the vast majority of users, "Internet on TV" will involve viewing 

custimsed "pages" intended primarily for DTV access and geared towards 

the specific social and viewing environment that your TV inhabits.


Saying that, "Internet on Computer" will also continue to grow (of 

course) and offer its own specialist services, many of which may never 

make it to DTV. Add to this "Internet on Mobile Phone" (see what Nokia 

are doing) and "Internet on PDA" (3Com, Apple) and you have a really 

exiting future in which we'll probably be "on-line" 24 hours per day - 

often without even realising it.


For the record, we've just won the Pace Micro Web site account (the 

company who make boxes for both of the new DTV services) and hence I've 

been doing alot of research into DTV recently. Take it from me, if you're 

a Web design company with an eye to the future you can't afford to ignore 

it...


Regards,


Sean

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sean clark          |

seancheadland [dot] co [dot] uk

 | tel 0115 9551155

headland multimedia | www.headland.co.uk   | fax 0115 9551156

cuttlefish          | www.cuttlefish.com   | pgr 01523 106554

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