Microsoft approaches the business of interactive TV the same way it approaches computing. It wants to set the basic software standards and supply some applications while leaving the high risk of building capital-intensive hardware and networks to other … “We won’t dig up the streets and put $10 billion into the ground,” says Laura Jennings … “The TV must make the transition from a broadcast appliance to a tool,” says Lowell Tuttman … But isn’t that the most absurd of uphill battles? It’s the computer that was designed as a time-saving device. Not the TV. The TV has always been a time-wasting device. It’s there to entertain you, not help you get things done. GTE has already learned this lesson.
Predictor: Jennings, Laura
Prediction, in context:For a 1995 article for Wired magazine, reporter Evan Schwartz traveled across the U.S., checking out the interactive television consumer testing being conducted by entertainment/technology corporations. In the process, he interviewed Laura Jennings and Lowell Tuttman of Microsoft’s Advanced Consumer Technology Group. Schwartz writes:”[In] Redmond, Washington … Microsoft and cable colossus Tele-Communications Inc. plan to recruit 2,000 area homes by 1996 to test their incarnation of interactive TV. Cable subscribers in the area will get interactive games, information services, movies-on-demand, and a graphical program guide to search through all this new stuff. Fiber-optic threads radiate from a new ‘head-end’ control room on Microsoft’s corporate campus and link into dozens of scattered neighborhood ‘node’ computers, where the data switches onto coaxial cables leading into living rooms. There, Compaq PCs are emulating the set-top box’s role of decompressing the video and displaying it onscreen. Overall, Microsoft approaches the business of interactive TV the same way it approaches computing. It wants to set the basic software standards and supply some applications while leaving the high risk of building capital-intensive hardware and networks to others … when the time comes to roll the technology out to the masses, it will delegate that work to partners such as TCI. ‘We won’t dig up the streets and put $10 billion into the ground,’ says Laura Jennings, senior director of marketing and business for Microsoft’s Advanced Consumer Technology group. Instead, Microsoft intends to make money by selling software, not only to TCI but to dozens of phone and cable companies that are sinking $10 billion or so into the ground. Microsoft is creating not just the onscreen user interface, but also the MS-DOS-type software that operates the set-top boxes. Not to mention the Microsoft Media Server that sends streams of video to thousands of those boxes, plus the software that manages the basic operations of the network. Taken together, this is known as the Microsoft Interactive Television ‘platform.’ Southwestern Bell Video Services is among the other companies that will test the platform when it strings up 47,000 homes in Richardson, Texas, starting in late 1995. At the same time it supplies basic software, of course, Microsoft is also creating content, such as PC-industry news programs, educational channels, and shopping services. In the process, Microsoft seems to be projecting the economics of computing onto this new market, as if watching TV were an exercise in productivity akin to setting up a spreadsheet. ‘The TV must make the transition from a broadcast appliance to a tool,’ says Lowell Tuttman, a group manager under Jennings. But isn’t that the most absurd of uphill battles? It’s the computer that was designed as a time-saving device. Not the TV. The TV has always been a time-wasting device. It’s there to entertain you, not help you get things done. GTE has already learned this lesson.”
Date of prediction: January 1, 1995
Topic of prediction: Getting, Sharing Information
Subtopic: TV/Films/Video
Name of publication: Wired
Title, headline, chapter name: People Are Supposed to Pay for This Stuff? Crisscrossing the Country, Our Intrepid Correspondent Visits Corporate Labs, Model Living Rooms, and Actual Sofas, to Check Out the Megahyped Interactive Television Prototypes and See Just How Real the 500-Channel, All-Digital, High-Fiber Future Really Is
Quote Type: Partial quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/3.07/cable_pr.html
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney