Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!unix.cis.pitt.edu!dsinc!bagate!cbmvax!cbmehq!cbmger!peterk
From: peterk@cbmger.UUCP (Peter Kittel GERMANY)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Subject: Re: What the heck IS "Interactive TV"? (long)
Message-ID: <1107@cbmger.UUCP>
Date: 12 Apr 91 06:54:41 GMT
References: <1991Apr11.090415.5276@ncsu.edu> <1991Apr11.143222.13728@mintaka.lcs.mit.edu>
Reply-To: peterk@cbmger.UUCP (Peter Kittel GERMANY)
Organization: Commodore Bueromaschinen GmbH, West Germany
Lines: 28

In article <1991Apr11.143222.13728@mintaka.lcs.mit.edu> rjc@geech.gnu.ai.mit.edu (Ray Cromwell) writes:
>
>  I'm going to play Devil's Advocate here and say that I don't think
>interactive TV will be the next revolutionary home device. People are
>used to being passive watchers/listeners. People usually don't interact
>with TV/CD Players.

Hmm, but the advertising industry complains heavily about people doing
too much zipping, i.e. changing channels immediately when ads come up.
So people indeed are heavily using their remote controls! And there's
nothing else they'll have to do with a CDTV or CD-I.

The applications Kevin cited (e.g. walking through a museum) sure must
consider this issue: They have to provide a default path through such
an application when the user does nothing, so that he just can watch
passively if he doesn't have special interest in certain details.
This is no complicated issue, many games today already show such a
behaviour. When the user doesn't act after a certain timeout, the prog
falls into a demo mode. The same timeout mechanism should be built-in
into CDTV applications. (Though the user should be able to cut in at
any moment, when he recognizes something interesting.) And considering
the huge capacity of a CD-ROM, those demo modes could show much more
than in the past, where obviously memory considerations tightened
some of the demos to only minimal fractions of a game.

-- 
Best regards, Dr. Peter Kittel  // E-Mail to  \\  Only my personal opinions... 
Commodore Frankfurt, Germany  \X/ {uunet|pyramid|rutgers}!cbmvax!cbmger!peterk