4 ms·

The CD-I (along with WebTV and some other things) was the initial step of the TV morphing into some sort of Information Superhighway appliance. MSNBC was a par

The CD-I (along with WebTV and some other things) was the initial step of the TV morphing into some sort of Information Superhighway appliance. MSNBC was a partnership of Microsoft and NBC that was created in anticipation of this as well. But the TV/PC hybrid never happened. (Today's Apple TV, XBox, etc really aren't what people had in mind.)

BonesJustice 8y ago
TiVo was really the first product that came close to fulfilling the dream of “asynchronous TV”, which is now fully realized thanks to streaming. Anyone else remember reading that chapter in Bill Gates’ book “The Road Ahead” back in the ‘90s?
niftich 8y ago
It sort of happened, just 20 years later, and the details are different. The web's user experience proved to be superior to that of physical media you had to switch out, but Internet speeds had to get fast enough (and the usage billed in a lenient way) for rich multimedia to be delivered smoothly. In the meantime, the TV screen lost relevance to first desktop computers, then laptop computers, then smartphones. Microsoft was the only large company who consistently hammered on this idea (Encarta, DHTML, MSN, HD-DVD's HDi, Xbox 360's dashboard), and with a vested interest in the health of the desktop ecosystem, but they couldn't execute this first convergence -- and ironically, neither the second convergence of desktops and smartphones. Apple and Google leapfrogged them in critical ways, and this interactive consumption revolution took place on the latter two's portable smartphones instead.
- ericras 8y ago
  It definitely happened, but in a much different way: mostly over the internet/www and on computers and phones. The vision in the early-mid 90s was for something like MSNBC to be an interactive TV channel, delivered by the TV/cable provider, where you could chat/vote/etc through the TV and customize your experience. That sounds similar to what we have now (with their cable channel, accompanying website, app, Twitter, etc) but the technical details and delivery mechanisms ended up being totally different.
  - zeveb 8y ago
    > That sounds similar to what we have now (with their cable channel, accompanying website, app, Twitter, etc) but the technical details and delivery mechanisms ended up being totally different. I think the really key thing here is that general-purpose computing won over purpose-built devices. Yeah, an mid-90s embedded system probably had a better UI in many ways than even a 2018 browser-based system, but that embedded system could only do one thing well while the browser system can do many, many things — and some of them quite well indeed! Moreover, it turns out that all those industry committees couldn't accurately predict the future. Neither could the free Web folks (anyone remember the Semantic Web?) — but because the free folks let anyone do anything, they let the winners do their thing. Meanwhile, the centralised industry committees didn't allow experimentation — or when they did, didn't allow enough. C.f. OSI vs TCP/IP, X.400 vs SMTP &c.
chrisfinazzo 8y ago
Of course, it also helped the later efforts that the other shoe of CD-ROM and Internet appliance development never really dropped - at least how they were expecting. It still boggles my mind that basic web skills (HTML, CSS, etc.) didn't proliferate in academic settings, outside of tech curriculum. The death of most of the appliance devices was so fast that people never really tried to learn it. You aren't going to make everybody a programmer, but the arc of history would have been different if that was the baseline.
a-dub 8y ago
There was quite a little ecosystem in that space around 2000. Liberate technologies, OpenTV and Microsoft were all jockeying to fuse the browser and TV. I worked on Liberate's product for a little while which looked a lot like Android. (at least the fire TV version) Turns out that like CD-i no one cared. Liberate had a blockbuster IPO which fell to earth long before anyone could sell. (I think my boss from that time actually worked on CD-i)
joncrane 8y ago
I almost exclusively use my computer to view video content (in my case, mostly streaming sports but some Netflix as well). About 70% of the time, the thing I'm watching can be "cast" via Chromecast onto my TV. So I'd argue that my laptop is indeed the TV/PC hybrid. I would also argue that the "smart" TVs that have Netflix and Amazon Movies and services like that built in are also candidates for the "TV/PC Hybrid" moniker.

BonesJustice 8y ago

TiVo was really the first product that came close to fulfilling the dream of “asynchronous TV”, which is now fully realized thanks to streaming. Anyone else remember reading that chapter in Bill Gates’ book “The Road Ahead” back in the ‘90s?

niftich 8y ago

It sort of happened, just 20 years later, and the details are different. The web's user experience proved to be superior to that of physical media you had to switch out, but Internet speeds had to get fast enough (and the usage billed in a lenient way) for rich multimedia to be delivered smoothly. In the meantime, the TV screen lost relevance to first desktop computers, then laptop computers, then smartphones. Microsoft was the only large company who consistently hammered on this idea (Encarta, DHTML, MSN, HD-DVD's HDi, Xbox 360's dashboard), and with a vested interest in the health of the desktop ecosystem, but they couldn't execute this first convergence -- and ironically, neither the second convergence of desktops and smartphones. Apple and Google leapfrogged them in critical ways, and this interactive consumption revolution took place on the latter two's portable smartphones instead.

ericras 8y ago
It definitely happened, but in a much different way: mostly over the internet/www and on computers and phones. The vision in the early-mid 90s was for something like MSNBC to be an interactive TV channel, delivered by the TV/cable provider, where you could chat/vote/etc through the TV and customize your experience. That sounds similar to what we have now (with their cable channel, accompanying website, app, Twitter, etc) but the technical details and delivery mechanisms ended up being totally different.
- zeveb 8y ago
  > That sounds similar to what we have now (with their cable channel, accompanying website, app, Twitter, etc) but the technical details and delivery mechanisms ended up being totally different. I think the really key thing here is that general-purpose computing won over purpose-built devices. Yeah, an mid-90s embedded system probably had a better UI in many ways than even a 2018 browser-based system, but that embedded system could only do one thing well while the browser system can do many, many things — and some of them quite well indeed! Moreover, it turns out that all those industry committees couldn't accurately predict the future. Neither could the free Web folks (anyone remember the Semantic Web?) — but because the free folks let anyone do anything, they let the winners do their thing. Meanwhile, the centralised industry committees didn't allow experimentation — or when they did, didn't allow enough. C.f. OSI vs TCP/IP, X.400 vs SMTP &c.

chrisfinazzo 8y ago

Of course, it also helped the later efforts that the other shoe of CD-ROM and Internet appliance development never really dropped - at least how they were expecting. It still boggles my mind that basic web skills (HTML, CSS, etc.) didn't proliferate in academic settings, outside of tech curriculum. The death of most of the appliance devices was so fast that people never really tried to learn it. You aren't going to make everybody a programmer, but the arc of history would have been different if that was the baseline.

a-dub 8y ago

There was quite a little ecosystem in that space around 2000. Liberate technologies, OpenTV and Microsoft were all jockeying to fuse the browser and TV. I worked on Liberate's product for a little while which looked a lot like Android. (at least the fire TV version) Turns out that like CD-i no one cared. Liberate had a blockbuster IPO which fell to earth long before anyone could sell. (I think my boss from that time actually worked on CD-i)

joncrane 8y ago

I almost exclusively use my computer to view video content (in my case, mostly streaming sports but some Netflix as well). About 70% of the time, the thing I'm watching can be "cast" via Chromecast onto my TV. So I'd argue that my laptop is indeed the TV/PC hybrid. I would also argue that the "smart" TVs that have Netflix and Amazon Movies and services like that built in are also candidates for the "TV/PC Hybrid" moniker.