Television on Trial

Every few years a new wave of media technology comes along - the telegraph, the telephone, radio, television, portable video cameras, computers, and now, interactive media - and people get hot under the collar about its potential benefits and how it's about to "change our lives". With the best of intentions marketing people and other interested parties foretell a brave new future to be brought about by whichever bit of gadgetry has recently been developed. However predicting the future can be a very risky business.

So how can we really test what effects these new technologies might have on us without wasting time and money on bad ideas? After all, some ideas might prove worthless and end up on the scrap heap. Then we find we've lost money buying soon to be obsolete pieces of equipment. And promised new services may never arrive. One solution is to operate a short term trial of the new service or technology. With computer software, a test or "beta" version is first distributed to a limited number of people to use. Their feedback is then incorporated into the product to improve it before being sold on a large scale. Testing new kinds of television services is a little more complicated.

Around the world there are over thirty operating or planned trials of new television. These trials range from simple near Video-On-Demand services, where the same series of movies is available across a number of channels starting at different times, to sophisticated "full" or multi-service pilots offering home banking, video phones, information, education and other services all together on one television set - and one phone bill.

Here in Australia, Telecom (Telstra) Australia, has been operating a trial of new cable-delivered services to 300 homes in Centennial Park Sydney since late 1993 prior to its Foxtel pay television joint venture with News Limited. Telstra also plans two further trials over the next two years in Melbourne and Canberra. The Gungahlin, Canberra, trial will test "full interactive broadband" cable (television) services to 5,000 homes. In Melbourne, 300 households will have compressed video sent cheaply down the phone line along with the telephone service using ADSL (Asynchronos Digital Subscriber Line).

These trials are interesting because they provide a window into possible future televisions. It's also a chance for participants to have their say about what they like and don't like about the new services and for media companies to test and refine the programs and other services they will provide. Such feedback from a sampling of users of new technology is an important part of the process of providing us with efficient and affordable new products and services. This feedback also represents a taste of a two-way, interactive television, where we can genuinely talk back, not only to our friends, neighbours and business acquaintances, but also to those who provide the services.

We can only hope that media companies become as good at talking with us, in the future, as they have been at talking broadcasting to us, in a one-way direction, in the past.