Digital television is coming soon. But how much difference will it make to what we see? Hari Kunzru looks at some of the interative options that could bring about radical changes in our viewing habits
Fawlty Towers has been indexed according to Basil's moods. Want to find instances of 'sarcasm'? Well, you can
'Digital TV " is a phrase the hapless British television viewer has been hearing for a long time now. Cable, satellite, digital terrestrial, interactive, on-demand there is a plethora of options and a formidable tangle of jargon attached to it. But amid all the talk about multiplexes, franchises and Rupert Murdoch, very little has been said about what will be on the TV of the future.
Ultimately, only serious geeks care about how the programmes get to them. But according to a recent survey, TV is the number one topic of conversation in Britain, and couch potatoes will want to know what the box is going to give them.
One answer is to be found in a basement under the BBC's Portland Place HQ, at a demo of the "Pilot Operating Centre", an experimental collaboration between the Beeb and computer company Informix. The POC is intended as an experiment, a first stab at how a future BBC might look and function. For some inexplicable reason all the Beeb people call it "Where's Q?".
In the "Where's Q?" version of tomorrow's TV, viewers are faced with a menu divided into genre options. Do you want to watch sport, comedy, drama or light entertainment? Choose comedy and you find yourself in another menu.
Fawlty Towers or Men Behaving Badly? Once inside the Fawlty Towers sub-menu, you can choose any episode, or search the whole series for that scene that cracked you up when you first saw it. This is full-scale, Web-style searching. Suddenly we are typing "don't mention the war" into a blank field, in order to pull up the exact bit of the exact episode where Basil persecutes his German guests.
The designers say that Fawlty Towers has also been indexed according to Basil's moods. Want to find instances of "sarcasm", or just plain "anger"? Well, you can.
Choices, choices. In this version of future telly, choice is everything. In fact, wherever you go in the world of digital TV, the word "choice" is on everybody's lips. Whereas for the BBC it means a million ways to watch Fawlty Towers, for BIB, the consortium which will be running British satellite TV, choice means shopping. The real cash cow for all the interactive TV operators is the possibility to flog goods and services to you at the touch of a button.
Retail wisdom has it that the easier it is to shop, the more we will do it. And what could be easier than clicking "buy" on a remote control? BIB's version of interactive TV will feature high-street brands, home banking, airline tickets, concert tickets, and even second-hand cars. Like all interactive TV operators, it says email and Internet services will be included, but it's clear that letting people communicate with each other is low down the list of priorities.
The box in your room is as likely to be pretending to be a video version of the Argos catalogue as it is to be showing Match of the Day.
The biggest change the channel-flicking couch potato will notice is the sheer volume of programming. Satellite alone will bring around 200 new channels. The Radio Times would have to be the size of a telephone directory to cope. What will stop us getting sore thumbs as we try to find EastEnders on channel 157 are "EPGs", or Electronic Programme Guides. According to industry analyst John Kavanagh, who tracks digital TV for consultancy company Cap Gemini, these TV indexing services are going to open up a whole new service industry. Kavanagh foresees "third-party TV search and indexing services which aren't owned by content providers or infrastructure owners" which may even provide the interface between viewer and content. So you might flick from BBC to ITV to channel XYZ through an interface owned by someone else.
One thing that's worrying a lot of people is programme quality. With more bandwidth to fill, programme-making budgets will be stretched to the limits. Independent production companies are already being asked by cable TV channels to come up with ways of making an hour of children's programming, for example, for £1,000. Yes, that's right. All in. Wages, sets, the lot. (BBC production guidelines, in contrast, put the cost at £60,000 to £180,000.)
So is digital TV just going to mean an avalanche of trash? Kavanagh again: "I'm sure there'll be a plethora of low budget programming - I think if you take the average there'll be a dumbing down - but because it's about choice and filtering I think there's every reason to believe there will be more high quality choice as well."
Of course, in the world of tomorrow's TV, high budgets will come with high ratings. Not that everyone will watch the same thing all at once. At the height of "traditional" British broadcast TV, shows such as The Good Life or Miss World could regularly get viewing figures in the 20 million range. Tomorrow, we will watch something when it's convenient.
The TV production companies won't just be thinking of British eyeballs, either. Resale possibility and shelf-life are everything. Nature programmes are already big international business, because they can be redubbed and resold around the world - and they're still worth watching 10 years after they were made.
One issue that has yet to be resolved is the question of interfaces. Just how are you going to do all this typing and navigating and choosing from a huge range of options? The BBC demo copped out completely, using a lackey at a keyboard. BIB, on the other hand, has gone for the teletext option, using the coloured keys on an ordinary remote.
Clunky, but possible. Mike Bennett, of new media design company Sunbather, has built some pilot interfaces, and thinks simplicity is the key. "People aren't going to be able to move a cursor across the screen from a long way away," he explains. Bennett is working with the idea of simple, big hotspots, three or four to a screen, which a remote-wielding viewer can "throw" a cursor on to.
According to Bennett, few of the big players seem to have thought these issues through. There seems little doubt that, at least at the beginning, interacting with your interactive telly is going to be a hit-and-miss affair.
Kavanagh predicts that after the glitzy launches, lack of attention to the nuts and bolts of billing, servicing and customer care may give tomorrow's viewer a few headaches. Still, the coming of interactivity is the most exciting thing to happen to TV since the advent of colour. It's got to be worth watching.
