Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!usc!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!decwrl!mcnc!taco!hobbes.catt.ncsu.edu!kdarling From: kdarling@hobbes.catt.ncsu.edu (Kevin Darling) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy Subject: What the heck IS "Interactive TV"? (long) Message-ID: <1991Apr11.090415.5276@ncsu.edu> Date: 11 Apr 91 09:04:15 GMT Sender: news@ncsu.edu (USENET News System) Organization: North Carolina State University Lines: 97 [The Q came to me in email, but since it seems to be of interest to many...] >I seem to have been living in a cave for the past several years. Could you >give me some example of a CD-I application? Why would I want to buy a player? >The sorts of things that I read only discuss the technology involved, not >the application of the product of the technology . If you were in a cave, you weren't alone, don't worry :-). This kind of thing has been vaguely touched on lately with personal computers (especially the Amiga), but the overall possibilities of widespread home consumer players, using CDROM storage capacities, may be something you have to experience firsthand to really get excited over. Good Interactive TV on any player will be neat! Ah heck, let me just give you some examples (some are real): Your player sits with the rest of your A/V equipment, hooked to TV and stereo. You place the disc in the player, and sit back on your couch with the remote control (a thumb-controlled joystick at the top, on some players). You hit the play button, and up comes the title screen and sounds of "Treasures of the Smithsonian". You're viewing a photographic quality view of a museum room with various objects... as you move the on-screen pointer around, an overhead floodlight seems to focus on different things. You flick around spotlighting display cases, sculptures, but decide to click on the portrait on the wall... And you move into a portrait hall of Presidents... you click on Lincoln and he springs into focus (note that there's a small navigation/map menu at the bottom of the screen in case you get "lost") reciting the Gettysburg Address. A little playing around with menus and you can get textual info on this man, but behind him is a flag so you click on it and the... Battle Hymn of the Republic is played as you segue into a Civil War section. There you explore the sights and sounds of various exhibits until you come across one of the famous photographers, and clicking on his camera takes you to the... Photographic section, where you get interested in movies and end up viewing Judy Garland's ruby red slippers and parts of the Wizard of Oz. Later, you might find your way back to the President's area where you hear Depression Era speeches and end up reviewing newspapers of the time. Well, it would take literally days to fully explore the Smithsonian. OR: You insert your Time-Life Photography disc, and in one section a famous photographer teaches you how to set your 35mm camera, which you do with the remote control and "snap" a picture... hey, no waiting! The resulting "photograph" is displayed so that you can be instantly critiqued on your subject placement and focus/light settings. Pretty soon you're a pro :-). OR: You insert a Tour of Washington, DC, and from a photographic view of your approach from the air you click on and tour Grant's Tomb and the Washington Monument... or check out a map of the city's public transit. Now you're getting hungry and that prompts you to check out the available five-star restaurants, with interior views and sounds, while you scroll through their food menus overlaid on one side. OR: You decide to play some armchair golf, so you put in your golf disc and choose the Augusta National course. Before starting play, you view a documentary about it, with top quality photographic views of the course from the ground and air, layouts of the holes, all while an inset video is showing the 1986 comeback victory of Jack Nicklaus. The background music and narration is CD quality. Then you play some realistic golf! OR: Your kids come home, so you let them use their Sesame Street disc... almost anything they click on takes them to another room where their favorites such as Big Bird entertain and teach them. You're amazed at how much they're learning from sitting in front of an interactive player: their interests are always catered to instead of them having no control. Naturally, there are also coloring book discs; and even one which lets them script and control their own interactive storybook tales. OR: You need to repair your bathtub faucet, so you pick up your LCD-screen handheld player and take it back to the bathroom with your Home Repair disc and set it up where you can see it, but remove the tiny remote control and put it beside you. You click your way over to the bathroom part of the house, click on the picture of the faucet, and study the exploded view while a full-motion inset of Bob Villa explains how to make the repair. He probably also gives you some grief, but that's a danger of Interactive-TV ;-). Click on any piece of the faucet, and details about it specifically come up. OR: Your monthly National Geographic disc comes with the magazine (you'll still want both). There's a map of Africa, so you click on Egypt and take a tour of the Pyramids. A photo with the Nile in the background catches your eye, and later you end up at Victoria Falls deep in Africa, viewing the roaring waterfall. Later you hear/see native animals, learn about gold mining, etc. And there will be games, and photograph-quality flight simulators, and gardening discs; Berlitz has just signed up to do CD-I teach-yourself language courses; and I'm sure you can imagine other neat uses. But the main thing is always the nice video, the great sound, and the total interactivity and simplicity of navigation by often just clicking on objects of interest. Most importantly, you need know nothing about computers at all. Zip. Zero. A good disc takes enormous preparation, and lots of good quality digitized sound and images. A good disc is an adventure! A bad one makes you think you're at a computer, retrieving data. Oh well enuf for now. Sorry for the length of this, but I hope it's better than the NeXt-vs-Amiga bandwidth :). cheers - kev