Tv, Telecom & Internet To Be Merged Into Single System

Digital television, telecommunications, publishing, games and the Internet are set to merge into a single home computer system, according to the exhibitors at the MILIA trade fair which closed yesterday.

At the start of the next millennium, family life at home will involve a home entertainment system computer in the living room with a big screen to watch films when you want, see sports games live or play interactive games with people at other locations.

In the study or bedroom there will be machines that resemble personal computers (PC), with productivity tools for work, browsers and search engines to find information on the Internet, digital video disc (DVD) drives for reference books and learning material and a camera for video telecommunication.

 

What we'll see is the seven inch/seven feet development, said Jack Davies, president of AIL International. For some types of activities and information you want to sit close to the screen, for others you want to sit back in a lazy chair or couch, he added.

Both kinds of machines are computers. Television makers like Philips Electronics NV and Thomson Multimedia are making the sets increasingly 'intelligent'', while PC makers such as Apple Computers and chip maker Intel Corp are trying to get PCs to give perfect video facilities.

Both machine types will be wired up to the Internet, a computer network set up by the US Pentagon for sending encrypted messages to missiles bases in case of a nuclear war which has been turned into a peace-time mass communications network by academics and computer hobbyists.

Telecommunications operators such as France Telecom are upgrading the speed of Internet connections by not only improving existing phone lines, but also offering Internet access over cable television networks and via satellite to digital television sets.

France Telecom sees the Internet as a potential gold mine because it will boost the use of telecommunications that will be profitable even at much lower call rates than now. The company's multimedia head, Gerard Eymery, said he believed in five years' time there would be between two and three million French people connected to online services against 200,000 at the moment.

France Telecom and Lyonnaise des Eaux are negotiating to set up a joint venture that will offer online services and Internet connection to two-thirds of France's cable television networks.

The Television Par Satellite (TPS) digital TV venture of TF1 and France Television, the rival service of Canal Plus unit CanalSatellite and satellite operator Eutelsat all showed the possible advantages of a link between television and the Internet.

This would need a little set-top box on the television, like the NetBox developed by France's NetGem SA which plugs into the television set and the telephone line.

There are similar developments in other countries.

But Canal Plus does not stop with Internet access. Building on the experience from MUD 'Multiple User Domains'' or 'Multiple User Dungeons'' interactive multiple-person games which are all the rage in the US, its C: unit offers an interactive parallel city called 'The Second World''.

By going online, people can 'live'' in a virtual Paris. They can play themselves or be someone else, they can meet other characters and have relationships.

They can even decide to change the city, demolish the Eiffel Tower for instance, and do all kinds of things they could not, or would not dare to do in real life.