INTERACTIVE TELEVISION - OPPORTUNITIES FOR NEW INFORMATION-SERVICES

Interactive television is something that is becoming quite widely talk ed about these days. In the United States they are going to have 500 t elevision channels but not all of them will be interactive. I understa nd that there is one called the fish channel, or fish net, or somethin g like this, and it just consists of fish swimming around in front of your eyes for nearly 24 hours out of 24; so it might be very relaxing but I do not know if you can really interact with them much, unless yo u just open your mouth in the same way they do. Our speakers are going to talk about interactive television. They are going to tell us what it is exactly. They are going to tell us about the transmission techno logies that you are able to use, how you actually interact with the pr ogrammes. They are going to talk about who is involved in interactive television, and why, and they are going to talk about potential servic es that one can have available with these devices. Our very first spea ker is going to tell us about what interactive television is - Judith Jeffcoate. She is an independent consultant specialising in new market s for information technology, she was the lead author on a report by O vum on interactive television multimedia, and she has just written a b ook on introduction to multimedia technology and applications.