The future of television?

        Many people have tried to merge computer technology with television, but the problem remains elusive. Although most modern TV's can receive digital input, there's still no universal standard for seamlessly merging the two technologies into one. Still, piecemeal advances are continually being made in the form of new products that give computerized features to ordinary TV's.

        One entrant in the field is Reincloud, a Mountain View startup headed by Dan Reitan. Dan has a long history of applying computer technology to television. He was a pioneer in augmented reality TV and one of his inventions in the 1980s scored the highest TV ratings ever in the history of automated television. I visited his office this week and he gave me a demo of his current product, which I found quite interesting.

        It's not quite ready for delivery and he's looking for additional funding to take it to the next step, but it's basically a platform that grants new capabilities to content providers. For example, it gives the content provider tools to create a real life three dimensional world where the TV screen acts as a viewport. By manipulating a few buttons, the home viewer can rotate that 3-D world to bring any portion of it into the viewport. This functionality opens up new possibilities for both producing TV shows and viewing them, and making them much more interactive than before. 

        He also showed me a segment from an old Monty Python program, and while John Cleese was talking, a can of Mountain Dew tumbled into the picture and landed on the desk next to him. Basically, the technology allows the easy placement of virtual objects anywhere in an existing program, in an appropriate place, for example on a table and not hanging in space. Ultimately, these objects will be live links, and clicking on them will lead to further information about them. Of course you'll be able to return to your original program at any time. The implications not only for advertising but also for news and documentary programs are huge.

        Although I'm not expert enough to predict how these tools will do in the marketplace, they do seem to add some exciting new dimensions to our current TV viewing experience.