Towards the convergence of interactive television and WWW

Watching the television has traditionally been a passive activity, where broadcasters provide a selection of programs and the viewer chooses a single program from that selection. In the past there was only a single television set in each house and viewing was often a family activity. The falling cost of sets coupled with greater affluence has led to an increase in the number of television sets within a household. One result of this has been a tendency to make viewing a more solitary occupation. Television has had to compete with other forms of home entertainment, notably personal computers and games consoles. The former offers access to the Internet as well as providing games, while the latter not only provides an alternative to viewing broadcast television, but may also use the TV set as its output device. With the arrival of digital broadcasting has also come the possibility of interactive television. Already, a number of countries have either introduced, or are currently in the process of introducing interactive services. These services are often similar to those available via the Internet and for some time it has been suggested that these are converging technologies. We look at the history of both interactive television and World Wide Web (WWW) technologies, draw a parallel between them and show how convergence is already taking place. Finally a number of possible models for future convergence are presented