Interactive digital TV. back when digital TV launched in the UK during late 1998, the major platofrm (Sky, ONdigital, Telewest and ntl) were all hyping up thei

Interactive digital TV. back when digital TV launched in the UK during late 1998, the major platofrm (Sky, ONdigital, Telewest and ntl) were all hyping up their interactive services. Sky's service was called Open.... (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open.... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open....) and you could order pizza, email, go shopping, dating, betting etc. Sky were so convinced it was going to be a money spinner they gave away all the boxes for free. The underlying technology was also used to add interactively to TV shows. For example you could choose the camera angle in some football games and the BBC made a documentary about dinosaurs that worked like a multimedia CD-ROM. Most of these services lasted less than five years, the services were sluggish, the proprietary tech didn't help and in any case the web did it better. I didn't think the shopping/commercial side would succeed, but I was convinced there would be a huge market for interactive TV. Nope, there wasn't.