Legends of ITV: Tales from the Gripped

By Patrick Donoghue

Deep beneath the ground of some Lovecraftian ITV graveyard lay the remains of remote controls long since dead and buried. Once full of hopes and dreams, they lay festering in unremembered obscurity. With the help of Buzztime Entertainment president, Ty Lam, I have resurrected some of the remotes that were never given a proper send-off. Were some of these specimens abominations that never deserved to live, or just misunderstood creations like Frankenstein's monster? We must dig deeper to know.

NTN

This is one of the first commercial remotes that NTN used when the sports-bar ITV network launched in the early 1980's. It was wired to a PC and a laserdisc player (a really big DVD, for our younger readers), and enabled patrons of sports bars to play along with the NFL football show, "Monday Night Football," by predicting the next play. NTN got their first NFL license for ITV in 1983 and have offered QB1, the live football-prediction game that this remote was designed for, ever since. The local NTN service guys had to go to each bar before "Monday Night Football" and tape the wires down to the floor so the patrons wouldn't trip on them! If this remote were still in use, we can only assume that it would now come with a beer-holder attached.

What was the question? (pepperoni or mushrooms?)

The "TV Answer" remote was used in two-way wireless ITV trials in northern Virginia in the late 80's/early 90's, which used the new IVDS (Interactive Video Data Services) wireless spectrum from the FCC. This was Ty's first ITV gig, and black-&-white buttons overlaying commercials were all the rage! The remote was basically a wireless mouse that enabled the user to select from on-screen options on the TV screen. This was before the Web, so searching for information, shopping, and banking all on your TV with a remote was pretty cool! Ty realized that interactive data applications on TV were short-lived when a junior tech support guy showed him a new invention called a Web Browser! Viewers were also able to use this remote to play QB1 alongside NFL games and to buy pizza. However, it was eventually abandoned because it looked too much like a toy gun.

Interactive Network

This was more of a game pad than a remote control. In the early 90's, the Interactive Network licensed NTN's QB1, and used this remote to allow viewers to enter in their live play-call predictions. The official play call was sent from NTN's ITV studios in Carlsbad, Calif. to the Interactive Network (via phone lines!), then on to the remotes using FM side-band. Now that's what I call wireless!

Look, Up in the Sky! It's AirMouse!

In 1993, I was given this AirMouse remote to use with the ITV service we were building for Viacom Cable and AT&T. This hand-built unit from Bell Labs was one of two in existence and was rumored to be worth $5,000. The idea behind it was to let customers navigate ITV applications with an on-screen cursor.As a true geek, I carried my friend, the AirMouse, with me in my carry-on luggage whenever we did demos, and grew so attached to it that I refused to let it out of my possession when the Viacom New Media group was disbanded. Anyone who witnessed the demo may remember me sitting in the back of the room twirling a screwdriver and juggling batteries. The remote was designed to turn on every time the customer picked it up--a capability that its inventors made possible by coating its back and its button with a special electrically conducting paint. Touching the button completed a circuit and brought the remote to life. What the engineers didn't factor into their plans was that people like to hold their remote like a baby holds a pacifier--so the batteries would be dead before the end of "Matlock."It wasn't until I saw the phenomenal "loop" remote from Hillcrest Labs that I realized the major flaw with the AirMouse. We never thought about how people would change channels with a single button. We must have been so enamored with our MovieTime Anytime application that we assumed people would never watch traditional TV again. Dan Simpkins and the folks at Hillcrest solved the problem with a very innovative gesture-based on-screen channel selector. In fact, the Freespace Loop is one of the most original and promising remotes to come along and will undoubtedly be coming to an ITV deployment near you.

GTE Mainstreet

There were at least three versions of the Mainstreet remote. This was in the early 90's when the telcos were aggressively entering the cable market (for the first time!). As it happened, their first deployment of ITV was with Daniels Cable in Ty's backyard, Carlsbad, California. Mainstreet eventually launched in Los Angeles, Tampa, and Boston before they shut it down. NTN had multiplayer programming including trivia, QB1 football and various poker games on the system. They used a dedicated channel and an ITV set-top box and produced some cutting-edge applications. The remote in the middle had a hidden keyboard underneath it for shopping and registration. The remote on the right had a plastic QB1 game overlay that was shipped to all subscribers, so that they could easily select the next play in the NFL football game.

Now that their stories have been told, is it possible that these dead and buried remotes can rest in peace or will they be reincarnated in a new and more advanced form like the AirMouse was? Let's hope we have given them a proper exorcism and they will no longer haunt our dreams.

**

Special thanks to Ty Lam of NTN Buzztime for unearthing many of these remote controls. Ty is one of the nicest and smartest guys in ITV and has been developing and marketing interactive entertainment for over 15 years. He is currently on the Board of Directors of the Interactive Television Alliance and has been listed in the CableFax 100 for the last two years as a leader in the cable television industry. You can find out more about Buzztime at Buzztime.

A special thanks also to Dan Simpkins and the team at Hillcrest Labs. They continue to push the envelope of ITV with outstanding customer-centric navigation. Go to Hillcrest Labs for a look at the future.

***

Legends of ITV columnist Patrick J. Donoghue is a long-time ITV evangelist and visionary who fights the good fight every day to get ITV into the hands of real people. He has been the recipient of several ITV Emmys and the [itvt] Award for Leadership in Interactive Television.

Please contact him with your favorite war stories at donoghue@itvt.com<--------------

***

Next Legends: ITV phone home…

The true believers of interactive TV have faced daunting odds in their quest for non-passive television, and from the earliest days have used any means to accomplish their goals. In the days before middleware and digital set top boxes, one such group of believers took it upon themselves to build an entire ITV world. You didn't need a remote control to enter this world. Just a phone, a TV and something called YORB! Stay tuned…

***

Click http://www.itvt.com to subscribe to our free email newsletter, which contains all the news stories you see on this Web site, and additional breaking news and scoops, in-depth features, interviews, screenshots, videos, and other exclusive content you will not find anywhere else.