The Future of Television

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Here's an example of convergence and hybrid devices: Kyocera, the Japanese consumer electronics company, announced today (Monday) that it will introduce the "world's first hand-held portable TV phone" in mid-December. The TV device, it said, will have multiple functions, including the ability to transmit black-and-white pictures of phone callers at the rate of two images per second, to take color digital photos that can be downloaded to a computer, to access the Internet, and to function as a cellular phone using Japan's new Personal HandyPhone System (PHS). (from Studio Briefing, 11/3/97).

Regarding the email box prediction: Satellite SuperHighways is launching a Hypercast service that will transmit e-mail messages via the airwaves, using the television's vertical blanking interval or VBI. The VBI is a portion of the TV signal that is currently used for closed-captioning. (Investor's Business Daily 28 Oct 96 A6).

Jim Moloshok, senior vice president of Warner Brothers Online predicts that, "People will be checking their e-mail during the commercial breaks in Friends." Quoted in Broadcasting & Cable, 10/28/96, p. 58.

In the near future, some consumers will employ new devices to record and store their own digital recordings. For example, this clip from STUDIO BRIEFING, 12/31/96 refers to one such innovation:
Opening the way for personal computers to record and store full-length motion pictures, IBM said Monday that it had developed a hard disk drive that can store 5 gigabits of data per square inch, three times more than its top Travelstar VP drive. The company said, however, that the hard drives are not likely to be available for several years.