LOS ANGELES -- TV did its best to create a buzz at Digital Coast '99, a sure sign of Hollywood's belief that video and broadband are going to drive the Web to its next stage.
Executives were hawking new interactive TV, TV-on-your-PC, and digital TV recording devices all over the floor of the Directors Guild of America, hosts of Digital Coast '99.
Here are some TV highlights from the two-day show, which wound up Thursday:
Free PCs? How about free TVs? Taking its cue from companies giving away free PCs in return for detailed demographic data on customers, Vancouver, British Columbia-based Planetville and partner Cinax began giving away free TV tuner boards and MPEG software yesterday at the Digital Coast conference.
In exchange for full-screen, NTSE-quality TV on their PCs, consumers' channel-surfing habits will be automatically forwarded to Planetville, which will use the information to craft Web pages and personal TV listings as well as to attract advertisers and network partners hungry for the data.
For an extra US$99, users can also order Cinax's WinVCR software, which allows them to record and fast-forward TV shows and movies on their computer. By early next year, Cinax plans to offer software that allows users to pause live TV on their computers, just as TiVo and Replay TV do now with their devices.
"We're offering the same functionality (as those companies), but instead of spending $1,500 for all the equipment, we give you the hardware free," said Eric Camirand, Cinax's president and COO. Besides, "Who are the early adopters: TV couch potatoes or PC users?"
Cinax's WinVCR software allows users to compress cable or broadcast streams to fit a two-hour feature on their hard drives. The free boards and MPEG software are available at the Planetville site.
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Taking a Spin on Interactive TV: Alex Thompson, CEO of Culver City, California-based Mixed Signals Technologies, reported that an interactive version of Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune successfully went live on Monday to a limited TV audience of WebTV Plus users.
As the first interactive TV game shows ever, "we weren't sure whether we were going to be popping champagne or catching a shuttle out of the country," Thompson said.
Viewers are able to play along with the contestants in real time, accumulating points as they go. The service will be formally rolled out to Web TV Plus users on 4 October. It will also debut on the Game Show Network in the winter.
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Shaking in his Boots? Not exactly. At a demo session, TiVo chief executive Michael Ramsey announced that Best Buy will begin selling its digital TV recording device nationwide on Friday. A version with 14 hours of storage will retail for US$499.
At the same time, TiVo announced that its technology will be incorporated in future Sony digital recorders. Sony will also develop programming for the TiVo platform and took a minority stake in the company. The alliance is a "significant endorsement of TiVo's technology and personal television service," Ramsay said. Replay Networks (http://www.replaytv.com ) CEO Anthony Wood said he doesn't regard the two companies so much as competitors as allies in the creation of a new form of easy-to-use TV recording devices that will spell the end of appointment television. He predicted that the companies' technology will be integrated into next-generation television sets and other TV-related equipment.
Quote of the day: "By no means do we want to be a soft porn site. Nudity, we do our best control, but every now and then, something happens." -- Larry Lux, CEO of Pseudo.com, which advertises itself as "TV You Can't Get on TV."
