THE CANBERRA BRANCH OF THE AUSTRALIAN COMPUTER SOCIETY INCORPORATEDTHE CANBERRA BRANCH OF THE AUSTRALIAN COMPUTER SOCIETY INCORPORATEDThe Federal Government and Opposition policies on Pay TV are not keeping up with current information technology developments.
The ACS has as members the information technology professionals who are developing the new products, which will make new broadcasting regulations necessary. It is therefore appropriate for the ACS to make the implications of these technologies clear to the Parliament.
One of the new technologies can be broadly called "multimedia" or "hypermedia". The distinctions between newspapers, radio and television are rapidly disappearing from the technologist's point of view. Hypermedia is merging the technologies used for delivering these media.
The same computer and telecommunications equipment can already be used to carry textual material with still images (similar to an electronic newspaper), sound (radio) and moving images (television). Developments are currently underway to combine these into one form of media: hypermedia.
A hypermedia document can look like a newspaper with text and still images. When the user points at specially marked parts of the hypermedia document a sound or video recording is played. Initial implementations of this technology are available from a number of suppliers and increasingly new computer equipment is being advertised as having this capability built in.
There are possibilities for new forms of products building on 'hypermedia' developments. New broadcasting options such as 'narrow-casting' could be used to deliver 'electronic newspapers' or in effect 'radio with pictures'. These could be used to increase the diversity of Australian media. These also represent potential new products for Australia to export to the world. While the technology used for hypermedia is well developed the programme material (the equivalent of "TV Programmes") is not. This is an area where Australian industry has an opportunity to develop an new domestic and export industry.
The development of hypermedia has the potential to render most of the regulations proposed for subscription television and existing for broadcasting irrelevant and unworkable. With the convergence of print media, radio, television and telephones it will be very difficult to legislate in a particular area.
Multimedia is a new media and needs to be experienced to be understood. The ACS urges the Senate Committee to see a demonstration of multimedia and can arrange this.
The Australian Computer Society is the professional association in Australia for those in the computing and information technology fields. It was established in 1966. The Society has over 14,000 members and on a per capita basis is one of the largest computer societies in the world.
The mission of the Society is advancing professional excellence in information technology. The objects of the Society are: To further the study, science, application and practice of computing; To promote, develop and monitor competence in the practice of information technology by persons and organisations; To maintain a Code of Ethics for the members of the Society; To define standards of knowledge for members; To promote the formulation of effective policies in computing, information technology and related matters ; To extend the knowledge and understanding of information technology in the community; To serve and support the members of the Society; To promote the benefits of being and/or employing a member of the Society.
Tom Worthington MACS PCP
Chairman of the Canberra Branch and
Convener of the ACS Pay TV Working Party
In his book "The Media Lab" Stewart Brand describes some of the MIT Media Lab's research on the merging of newspapers, television and computers. Commercial computers have reached the level of power and cost effectiveness to put this research into practice. The immediate application suggested is a multi-media news service. This can provide a pay video news service with out the need for a dedicated
One of MIT's developments was the electronic newspaper. This showed articles from electronic services selected according to the particular reader's previously registered preferences. This is already possible and implemented using various wire services and "computer conferences". This is not new technology and a number of systems can display selected news-type stories on screen.
The MIT electronic newspaper also had real time video and sound. Photos in the newspaper were actually a still frames from a news broadcast. When the reader showed interest in a photo, by pointing at it, the news story would be replayed.
This technology is more generally called "multimedia" and is just becoming affordable for personal computers. One example is Apple's "Quicktime" software. It still isn't something everyone at home could afford now, but is achievable for business purposes. I suggest therefore that the electronic newspaper be renamed the Multi-media Wire Service (MMWS) for a business orientation.
Audio and video is still much more expensive, in terms of communications bandwidth, than text. The one exception is where the audio or video is broadcast to a large audience and computer use is a by-product.
The proposed MMWS is therefore primarily a text based system, supplemented with still images, audio and video. This may also fit with the common perception of video and audio being primarily entertainment media: someone in business who reads all day is working, but someone who watches television is not.
The MMWS would be aimed at businesses which currently use computer text news services and possibly a video news service. The MWS combines both services into one. Some users could take either the text or video components separately, but with a reduced level of service.
The MIT electronic newspaper assumed storage at the user's terminal of the text, audio and video of stories. Text storage is feasible, storage of more than a small amount of audio and or video is not. This may also be less relevant for use in real time business activities, such as the finance industry, as old news isn't news.
The MWS could be entirely broadcast by the one media (such as direct satellite or terrestrial broadcast) or components by several different methods (real time text, video and audio by satellite, inquiry service by conventional modems/X.25 and archive video/audio service via ISDN in close to real time).
One example of a current broadcast text news is Teletext. This is transmitted using spare capacity on current television broadcast channels. To display Teletext transmissions a decoder is required. This is either built into the television set or as an add on unit (at a cost of about $550).
Interfaces are now available for Teletext data to be fed from a decoder into a personal computer (such as Digihurst Ltd's MicroEye TV1). The current Teletext service has sufficient capacity to support the MMWS without effecting existing Teletext users.
A service would require the user to have equipment to receive text, video and audio. The text service would be broad or narrow cast with general news items. The user's personal computer would scan these items for those of potential interest. These items would be brought to the user's attention, in priority order. Some items would be text only, the users could browse these at leisure. Other items would have accompanying audio or video.
The audio/video would be transmitted after the text. This would give the user time to read the text announcement and decide whether to view the video. In this way the user's equipment need not have audio or video storage to provide a useful service.
In a simple system there may be no electronic connection between the computer text based system and the audio/video system. The user might be simply instructed by the text article to switch to a particular video or audio channel at a particular time. A more sophisticated system would select the channel automatically and display the video on screen (the MicroEye Teletext board has a facility for controlling a VCR built in).
Satellite broadcast systems, such as AUSSAT provide for data channels, several audio channels and video. This would be sufficient capacity for the MWS. The data channels could carry text and still images. Even a teletext type service over conventional terrestrial television would have less capacity for still images.
Two way, interactive text access would be an enhancement to the system. This would allow for a greater range of textual information to be sent than would be possible where it must be broadcast. Specialised information could be sent to individual users, or small groups of users. This service would require only low cost data links (2400 baud) as used for current computer access, which can be provided on existing telephone technology.
With two way access archive information can be provided. This would allow a user who sees an item of interest live to search for previous related stories. These need not only be news services but could use other available on-line database services. This would also only require low speed (2400 baud) data links and could use dial up links on the Public Switched Telephone Network.
Archived audio and video stories could be accessed remotely. This would require higher speed links (such as ISDN basic rate at 64kbps). These stories need not be sent in real time, but in this case considerable computer storage would be required for recording audio or video on the user's PC. Real time audio or video could be played on demand and therefore would not require editing.
An alternative to transmission of archive material to individual users would be to broadcast it. In this case users could not select individual archive stories to be seen, but could only "vote" for background information on particular topics. Reports prepared from the archive on the topics with the highest vote would be broadcast. Users interested in that subject would be notified so they could watch. For other users the programme would look similar to news broadcasts where there is a small amount of new news footage followed by a large amount of archive material filling in the details.
The MWS could be a free service, a subscription service, a fee per use service or a mixture of each. Parts of the broadcast component could be "protected" by various means, so that subscribers would have to pay to view. The interactive component could be a fee for service, the more custom services (topics searched and archive items requested), the larger the fee.
The basic broadcast video and audio might be free, or provided at a low price and provide a CNN type news service, without computer assistance. The text and still video component could be selectively encoded to provide different topic services at different prices. If the interactive service is used it could provide automatic billing facilities and the ability to subscribe instantly to extra services.
The basic broadcast service could be carried on a conventional entertainment TV channel. The general viewer would see normal entertainment programming interspersed with frequent news reports. The MMWS subscriber would only see the selected news programmes and have their video turned off during the entertainment segments.
The same technique could be applied to recreational information programmes and specialist entertainment television. The viewer would only see the type of programmes they had registered an interest in. The BBC is reported (Fox,1992) to be ready to provide a limited service of this type called "Select". Programmes are encoded and broadcast after normal viewing hours on BBC 1 and BBC2 TV. Subscribers are supplied with decoders which detect the programmes which the viewer has paid to see and decodes the signal. The decoder activates the viewer's VCR to record the programme for later viewing.
Brand, S., The Media Lab, Penguin Books, 1988.
Fox, B., BBC Scrambles for Profits in the Dead of Night, New Scientist, 11 April 1992.
MicroEye TV1, from Digihurst Ltd., Phone: +44 763 242955.