Microsoft Enters the Consumer Fray Apple vs. Microsoft; What Happened to The Interactive Videodiscs? I/O; SMPTE task force makes strides CD-ROM: Everybody's doing it; Sony unveils Bookman, at last Designing TV for interactivity; HyperCard drama HD MAC is dead; Events Microsoft Enters the Consumer Fray 3 Earlier this month, Microsoft started making known its strategy for the emerging market in consumer electronics devices. Unlike Apple and various consumer electronics firms, which appear to pursue a number of disparate strategies in parallel (for example, Apple's consumer division vs. its advanced products group, and much the same scenario in Sony's many warring divisions), there are no apparent political battles within Microsoft. The company appears to be in total alignment for delivering Bill Gates's vision of computers in every home (whatever you want to call a computer) running Microsoft software (whatever you want to call software). But can a computer software company really understand what regular folks want? Apple vs. Microsoft 9 In the previous article, Microsoft's strategy is likened to a flying wedge. Apple, by contrast, has always flirted with chaos. One intention of a recent systems briefing in Napa was to demonstrate that at least the majority of Apple's herd of creative, opinionated workers is now charging in the same direction with the same objectives in mind. What Happened to The Interactive Videodisc? 11 On the heels of this month's Multimedia and CD-ROM Expo, where the unbridled enthusiasm was so thick you needed a scythe to walk the show floor, it might be a good time to take a little walk down memory lane. The first interactive multimedia format was the analog laser videodisc, which Philips and MCA introduced to the North American market in 1978. The laserdisc, as it came to be called, seemed to have it all: full screen, full motion video (up to two hours per double-sided disc), two tracks of good audio, and, if desired, up to 108,000 still images, in color. Videodisc, it was claimed, was the "medium of all media." What happened? 2 I/O Author Larry Gonick, after reading last month's piece on electronic publishing, asks, What about the authors? 14 SMPTE task force makes strides A new proposal may make digital media operable on equipment from NTSC televisions to HDTV and computers. 15 CD-ROM: Every-body's doing it This year's Multimedia and CD-ROM Expo may best be labeled "The Year of the Alliance." 16 Sony unveils Bookman, at last A vast and obvious improvement over the DataDiscman, it plays audio cds, too. 17 Designing TV for interactivity Is George Lucas's new Young Indiana Jones series the first "pre-purposed" program? 17 HyperCard drama The world's least costly multimedia authoring system may no longer be shipped with the Mac. 19 HD MAC is dead One European attempt at a high-definition TV standard is kaput. 20 Events NTU sponsors a live videoconference on multimedia. Focus Microsoft Enters The Consumer Fray Can a computer software firm really understand what regular folks want? Earlier this month, Microsoft started making known its strategy for the emerging market in consumer electronics devices. As you might expect from the world's most successful computer software company, the company's approach to dominance of the New Digital World is long-term and cohesive. Unlike Apple and various consumer electronics firms, which appear to pursue a number of disparate strategies in parallel (for example, Apple's consumer division vs. its advanced products group, and much the same scenario in Sony's many warring divisions), there are no apparent political battles within Microsoft. The company appears to be in total alignment for delivering Bill Gates's vision of computers in every home (whatever you want to call a computer) running Microsoft software (whatever you want to call software). The flying-wedge strategy has stood Microsoft in good stead in the PC software business, which it knows better than any other company in the world. The question is whether such an approach is useful in the consumer market, which weds hardware and software in a fundamentally different and much less forgiving union than does the PC. A 'digital information distribution strategy' At the CD-ROM Conference in San Francisco earlier this month, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates spoke broadly about the kinds of computing devices that the company believes will become available to consumers. But, in fact, Gates and his lieutenants have been meeting and dealing with many companies, including Sony and longtime Microsoft partner and chip maker Intel, about specific kinds of devices for which Microsoft would like to supply system software. The first shoe drops. The technology announcement of Sony's "Bookman" electronic reader at the CD-ROM Conference (see story, p. 16), powered by MS-DOS and using Microsoft's own Viewer technology as an authoring system, is only the first of many shoes to drop in the consumer arena for Microsoft. The company is both pursuing and being pursued by companies ranging from hardware vendors to traditional print publishers, all looking to exploit Microsoft's formidable industry clout. Though Microsoft has its eye on market niches such as personal digital assistants and interactive entertainment devices (details to follow), its approach is far different from that of the traditional consumer electronics firm. Unclear on the concept. Unlike Microsoft, consumer vendors are still unclear on the concept of digital information. They have only just started to deal in the digital domain, although their products have been powered by microprocessors for some time now. To date, the raison d'ˆtre for consumer electronics has been to hold the consumer captive to a product, usually via some kind of delivery form factor such as video or audio cassette, 8-track tape, cd platter or video game cartridge. This tactic was for many years used to great effect in the computer business, too, via incompatible operating systems, data formats and physical media. However, it (mostly) outlived its usefulness when customers began demanding the easy interchange of these components. It's even started to become less effective in the consumer world -- most notably in the case of Nintendo, where software providers demanded and won access to a market that Nintendo was trying to control via the form factor of its game cartridges. Building on the present. That's the critical difference between the old and new worlds. All things being equal, digital technology embraces, it does not exclude. The point is not to create new and interesting enclosures or boundaries for data, but instead to knock down the walls between devices or players and the information -- music, video, text, whatever -- that exists in whatever format. In contrast to the traditional model, Microsoft intends to build on its present software base as it enters the consumer market -- i.e., the Windows graphical environment -- to build what Nathan Myhrvold, Microsoft's vice president of advanced technology and business development, calls a "digital information distribution strategy." The flying wedge: research sets the foundation The foundation for Microsoft's future is the company's belief that people today mainly write and analyze with their computers; finding a way to expand how people think of and use computing technology for reading, information distribution and comprehension will greatly increase the market for new computing devices and software. It is Myhrvold's group that is clearly setting the pace for the company's voyage into these largely uncharted waters, via a comprehensive applied research program that focuses on three main genres. Very personal computers. One of Myhrvold's favorite tricks is to empty out his pockets during a meeting and assert that everything on the table could, and will, be computerized. (You may have heard this concept before: Xerox PARC calls it "ubiquitous computing," and is also working on the hardware and software to make it happen.) "Today, you can't use a computer for something as simple as lists to take to the store," Myhrvold says. "The things you use even a $10,000 computer for are limited --you're still doing the same things you did with an 8088. We have to change the form factor." Communications. Most communication today is created for an audience of one, according to Myhrvold's model. In addition to facilitating a whole new model of electronic publishing, digital communication enhances one-to-one connections by making it possible to focus on the message with less emphasis on how it gets to its destination. "Communication will be pervasive across a wide variety of devices from desktop to handheld," he says. "It is a fundamental technology area for us -- local networking, certainly, as well as wide-area access to digital information." Happily for those of us who worry about things like privacy and data integrity in a world where all data is digitized and flying around on public networks, Myhrvold claims to be a "moral supporter" of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (see Vol. 1, No. 5, p. 8), which is concerned with such matters. In addition, he says, Microsoft has licensed RSI Data Security's public key encryption technology for inclusion in upcoming products. Public key encryption is an extremely powerful method of protecting and validating data. It, or something like public key encryption, will become a cornerstone of the digital world as information owners and buyers require secure ways to send, receive and pay for digital media. HDTV/land-based machines. Myhrvold also says Microsoft will conduct basic research into high-definition imaging systems and what he calls "land-based machines" that deal with much higher bandwidth than can presently be transmitted. Though Myhrvold didn't say so, it's likely Microsoft is also interested in enabling fast, accurate and compatible transmission of data-intensive digital images from computers to these "land-based machines" because of Interactive Home Systems, Gates's startup company that is working with the problem of creating high-quality digital images (see Vol. 1, No. 4, p. 18). Both companies' major stockholder -- Gates -- obviously believes there is a major market opportunity in such images. Though Microsoft isn't averse to building hardware -- "when the need arises, we'll build hardware of the enabling variety," Myrhvold says -- by and large the company isn't interested in hardware research. Within each of these genres, Myrhvold says he has four missions:  To set technology strategy for the company and consult with product groups on the strategic level. In the past, people who started out with projects in the research divisions followed those projects as they were spun into product development. Myhrvold says the company is trying to build more permanence into the staff by bringing in product groups to work with the researchers as they develop products.  To support the industry's first and only all-software research lab. Called Microsoft Research, the lab's director is Rick Rashid, formerly a professor of computer science at Carnegie-Mellon University, who oversaw the development of the Mach extensions to the Unix operating system while at CMU. It's important to note that Rashid's charter at Microsoft is similar to what he did at CMU: find a way to take the old code base of Windows and implement interfaces to match the old applications while completely rebuilding everything else around it. "It's possible to carry the older world forward while rebuilding the insides," Rashid believes. "If you're careful, you can at least preserve your investment in what you've done before." Rashid says the lab will hire 50-60 people in the next two years. "Most research we shouldn't do," he says. "Our goal isn't to have 'one from Column A and one from Column B,' with token researchers in each area. We want to fund research that's not being done, like video compression algorithms."  Advanced product development. Myrhvold says this is where products like PenWindows, Windows NT and the new consumer products are being developed. As you might suspect, the fundamental difference between advanced development and research is that advanced development "probably can be done," he says. However, in research, "you don't know if it's possible, but wouldn't it be cool if you could." Advanced product development, he says, either cuts across traditional company divisions or is fundamental new technology. He says some work is being done in this group, for example, in making Microsoft's consumer electronics strategy "happen."  Business development and strategy. Though Myrhvold didn't say so, obviously this is where Microsoft figures out how to dominate the industry: choosing the areas where it can best implement new technologies, either from internal development, licensing key pieces of technology or forming strategic relationships with companies such as Silicon Graphics/MIPS, Apple for TrueType and RSI Data Security. If Myhrvold and his team succeed in these areas, he believes Microsoft will have a notable effect on the fundamental technologies for production, reproduction and distribution of all kinds of digital data (see graph, above). Raising the curve Myrhvold sketches a graph to illustrate the possibilities. The distribution curve for video and other types of media today looks a lot like the pre-Gutenberg/Xerox curve for documents on his graph -- as with documents, the number of videos that are actually seen by millions of people is relatively small. And despite the growing ubiquity of video data, very few homegrown videos are seen by more than one or two people. "The tools we're making now give us the opportunity to raise the curve, to make simpler not only the act of creating, but also reproducing and distributing, all kinds of information," he says. Myhrvold is convinced that the approach of consumer electronics vendors, such as Philips with CD-I, is "dead wrong" because they haven't simplified the distribution or the creation of products. "It's not just authoring, but creating an information business at all levels, with bottom-up grassroots and third-party support," he says. "This [new industry] won't happen because a bunch of big companies sign a contract. Look at Minitel in France -- its strength is that it allows people to create information businesses very cheaply. All you need is a [communications card] and a PC. It's cheap and very clean." Apple's karmic debt: ever first, ever co-opted These concepts -- the democratization of information creation and distribution -- are not new. They've been the foundation of most of the excitement around the digital media business for a few years now and Apple was the company first to bring them to public attention. Apple was also the first company to promote and popularize the graphical user interface for personal computers, via the Macintosh. Microsoft has now co-opted that position with the enormous success of Windows 3.0. In addition, Apple was first to create a powerful system software extension -- QuickTime -- for the kind of time-based information that Apple, and now Microsoft, says is critical to the development of this information market. Microsoft, Tandy and Intel (with IBM support) announced their own digital video alliance at the CD-ROM Conference. Called DV MCI, it is a digital video command set and architecture for Microsoft's Media Control Interface under Windows. Now, in a move that surely must convince Apple executives that they must have done something terribly sinful in a past life, Microsoft is starting to push hardware manufacturers to build computing devices for the consumer market. Apple chairman John Sculley announced essentially the same strategy at the Consumer Electronics Show in January. Gates even used Apple's term -- pda, for personal digital assistant -- during his keynote at the CD-ROM Expo in March. An impressive scenario Shortly after Sculley's keynote speech at CES, Gates and Rob Glaser, head of Microsoft's multimedia systems group, paid a visit to Andy Grove, chairman of chip maker Intel, Microsoft's biggest partner in the computer business. (Grove, by the way, is delivering the keynote address at Digital World this June.) Gates and Glaser made a detailed presentation to Grove about what they consider to be "new high-volume opportunities" for Intel based on the home/consumer market and the growing market for new mobile devices. Betting on Intel? Considering the enormous success that Microsoft has had in the past with Intel's chip technology, it's likely that Microsoft is placing its biggest bets for the future on Intel -- especially in the consumer market, with its potential for high volume sales of powerful 16- and 32-bit microprocessors. If you've been reading this newsletter for any length of time at all, the categories and the players listed below will sound familiar to you. But think of them in a new light: think about the world's largest software company and perhaps the world's largest microprocessor supplier entering these markets. It's an impressive scenario. Of course, one can only speculate on how Intel feels about Microsoft's relationship with Sony on the Bookman, which is powered by a NEC V-series microprocessor, an Intel 8088 clone that was the focus of a protracted legal battle with Intel which NEC won. Video support. Nec or no, Intel is continuing to support digital video in general, DVI specifically, and Microsoft and Tandy vis-…-vis the aforementioned digital video alliance. Clearly, the company is viewing the convergence of computing and consumer electronics as a huge potential market for chips. Clearly, this is what Gates has proposed to Grove. The only surprise would be if Intel did not accept the challenge. According to Gates and Glaser, here are the five devices presented to Grove. (In his speech at CD-ROM, Gates combined personal appliances and communicators into "pdas.") ú Interactive Entertainment System Connected to TV, to "enhance recreational or educational experience in the home." Price point would be $200-500, or provided as part of a subscription business. So far, they see the players as Nintendo, Sega, TV Answer, Philips (CD-I), SkyPix and Frox. Microsoft estimates that unit volume for such devices will be "tens of millions of systems per year" in 1992, and "at least tens of millions of systems per year" by 1995. ú Advanced Telephony, to "enhance home-based interpersonal communication transaction services." Microsoft figures smart phones will cost $200-500. Though there are few announced players in this market today -- AT&T is the only truly visible player here -- and the unit volume expected to sell by the end of 1992 is low, many such products are under development today. By 1995, Microsoft believes such devices will probably sell in the "millions of systems per year" category. ú Personal Information Appliances, known in Apple lingo as "personal digital assistants" or pdas, designed to provide a "ubiquitous, highly portable way to store, transmit and receive all forms of personal information (e.g., calendar, to-do list, address book)." Target cost is $200-600, and players already gearing up for this market are Sharp, Apple and Hewlett-Packard, though as in the case of smart phones, many more companies have similar products on the drawing board. Microsoft believes "millions of systems" in this category will be sold in 1992, and "at least" millions per year will be sold by 1995. ú Personal Communicators, for "ubiquitous, highly portable, integrated voice and data connection for individuals." Target system cost is $200-1,000, and the announced players -- General Magic, Apple, Sony, Motorola, GE Ericsson and Ardis (the cellular data network run by IBM and Motorola) -- have received enormous attention. Though sales volumes in 1992 are expected to be low, Microsoft believes in 1995 the unit volume for such systems is "probably millions of systems per year." ú Electronic Books, one of the most evocative consumer devices, will according to Microsoft provide a ubiquitous, highly portable playback mechanism for all forms of digital data, and will cost $200-700. So far, the announced players are Sony, with the DataDiscman and Bookman, and Philips, whoever builds a portable CD-I player. Unit volumes sold in 1992 are likely to be in the hundreds of thousands, but by 1995 Microsoft expects to see reader devices sell "probably millions of systems per year." Some of the unit volume estimates can only be gratuitous, since no one really knows what will happen. But it's clear that Microsoft believes strongly that the market is not exactly blue-sky. Speaking of 'Haiku': are we all dead now? Though Rob Glaser says Microsoft is "not prepared to make any product announcements," he says the company has already created a pared-down, scalable version of the Windows operating system to power these devices as they come to market. More a technology category than a product, the project's code name is Haiku. Its slogan within Microsoft: "I would tell you what I was working on, but then I would have to kill you," which is, you'll note, an actual haiku. Team sweatshirts have been duly created (see photo, p. 3). Sanjay Parthasarathy, product manager for Multimedia Systems Group, says the goal is a "sleek, fast" operating system, and he is finding the task not as difficult as he expected. "It's interesting to go in and see how much of Windows is simply printer drivers," he says. It's heartening to hear such statements, since the biggest complaint about Windows and its Multimedia Extensions centers around speed. Any moves Microsoft can make to eliminate system overhead from Haiku will be extraordinarily helpful. "The idea of minimalized Windows is potent for these systems," says Glaser. "Scalability and interoperability is crucial." Glaser is also aware that the vagaries of consumer productizing might mean a vast number of slightly different operating systems for different applications. Since Microsoft doesn't design hardware, he says, Haiku will make it possible for the company to work with hardware designers "on whatever level they want." What about the MPC? Good question. What about the MPC -- the Multimedia PC, the Real Big Deal that was going to insert digital multimedia into the hearts and minds of PC users from sea to shining sea? The response has been underwhelming since the MPC launch last year. But Microsoft refuses to give up on the specification, despite the groundswell of support for consumer devices which is likely to co-opt the market for MPCs in the future. Darby Williams, group product manager for the multimedia systems group, is convinced that multimedia-assisted computers will be popular in the home for as long as there are home computers. Though it's having a hard time finding a niche in the home -- the benefits of multimedia don't yet match the extra cost, which is in the multiple hundreds of dollars today -- he believes that clone companies will use the MPC moniker to differentiate themselves in a massively competitive commodity market in the next few years. Though it doesn't seem likely that the MPC will gain widespread acceptance in the near term, Williams does have a point that increasingly powerful PC clones are becoming incredibly cheap. "Cheap" is at the very least what is needed to crowbar MPC technology past the nice-idea stage and into the home. As this happens, Williams is convinced producers will segue more development dollars into MPC titles. Wherein lies the rub? Bill Gates can look at nearly any task and believe in his bones that it can be done better in software, preferably software sold by Microsoft. So far, he's been right. But the move into digital information devices for consumers is a vastly different one from the world in which he lives and breathes. Why? With consumers, the "just make a black box and they will come" theory of product design and marketing will not cut it. A consumer information device has to be something people want to buy. All the mass marketing hype in the world isn't going to make them dig deep if it doesn't do something for them, something which provides immediate and understandable benefit, with a pain factor that's less than (or at least equal to) that benefit. It also must work with similar devices or form factors on the market. Frosting on the cake. That is why Sony did so well with the Walkman and Discman. Both those products, in all their many versions -- with radio, without radio, record and play, play only, professional quality, waterproof, etc. -- provided immediate, recognizable benefit to someone who wanted to move around and listen to music at the same time. The frosting was that the music itself sounded even better than listening to it in the traditional way of through a speaker system. The same can certainly not be said for any multimedia system in the world today. In the same vein, that's also why Sony's done so poorly with the DataDiscman (see Vol. 1, No. 8, p. 7). To reiterate: A brand name only buys you a sale in the consumer market if it's already something people want to buy. A simple sentiment, perhaps. But as they say, simple doesn't mean easy. Despite the power of its flying wedge, Microsoft needs to remember that it has no cachet in the consumer market. Microsoft software may well power the vast majority of personal computers in the world, but this is nearly without meaning in the consumer world. In fact, it may have the negative psychological effect in the consumer world, forcing a mental connection to a computer -- the dreaded "C" word -- a connection which could well prove to be death in the market. 'Elephant Brand' software Though it is deeply woven into the computer landscape, Microsoft's name doesn't have the consumer recognition of either Apple or Sony. Microsoft's name means "serious computer" to most consumers who know it; ironically, it's become the new IBM. Microsoft will have to prove itself solely on merit, something it hasn't had to do in the computer world for a long time by virtue of its elephant-in-the-living-room status. If the shoe fits . . . As the biggest elephant in the software business, Microsoft can sit anywhere it wants. It talks a good line about openness and standards-setting and not reinventing the wheel in its research labs, but one of Microsoft's rote lines these days is "a standard is what everyone uses." Obviously Microsoft is the only shoe that fits in that category. That attitude doesn't contribute much to the greater good of a budding industry, or to creating better technology for users or consumers. Microsoft consistently sneers at Apple's offerings (one executive calls QuickTime "cute") because Apple is not the market leader, but Apple is clearly the technology leader that Microsoft has followed for almost a decade. Does anyone really believe, after all these years of IBM's dominance, that whoever sells more products has the best technology? Microsoft's Glaser says this statement is "grossly unfair," citing Microsoft's pioneering the CD-ROM Conference in 1986 and its delivery of content applications on cd including Multimedia Works and "lots of non-multimedia examples of innovation," such as Object Linking and Embedding, or ole, and the earliest graphical user interface applications for the Macintosh. "Both companies innovate in different areas," he says. "That's a fairer way to tell that piece of history. When you don't actually ship hardware, you have a mediated role. Somebody else has to 'excel,' if you'll excuse the pun, or blow it." True enough. And while Microsoft's greatest innovations, as Glaser says, have come from the applications group, Apple's greatest contributions are in system software. Clearly, as Glaser points out, the PC is an excellent content delivery mechanism. Just as clearly, Apple's mapped out its turf as a vehicle for delivery of time-based information such as video and speech. It's another example of where the two companies diverge. Whatever the differences between Apple and Microsoft, however, there is obvious appeal -- and great potential for success -- in Microsoft's version of the future, with a consistent hardware and software architecture ranging from simple consumer products up through sophisticated networks of business computers. But the success of consumer electronics companies has been in their ability to cooperate with the other big players. Sony, Philips and Matsushita have very different beliefs and approaches to their markets, but when they joined together, they changed the face of the entertainment industry. The big question for all concerned is not whether the PC industry model will map to the consumer market, but whether we really want it to. Denise Caruso Apple vs. Microsoft A great new battle is about to be joined In early March, Apple invited some 50 to 60 analyst/journalist types to an off-site briefing. Over two days, Apple's senior business and technical management described a new system software strategy for the '90s. That briefing, compared with Microsoft's strategy, nicely highlights some of the similarities and differences in the ways in which the two companies are approaching the digital world. Herd mentality vs. flying wedge In the accompanying article, Microsoft's strategy is likened to a flying wedge of unity, purpose and vision. This is because wherever ideas originate within the company, they ultimately have to be sold to one man -- Bill Gates -- and Gates is a very focused individual. This fact does not mean that Microsoft cannot alter its course or even completely change its mind about something. The company has a remarkable ability to embrace new ideas and new insights and let the past be past. Apple, by contrast, has always flirted with chaos. It is a fair job to get a collection of creative groups and opinionated individuals all heading more or less in the same direction at the same time. One of the points of the Apple system briefing was to demonstrate that at least the majority of the herd is now charging in the same direction with the same objectives in mind. Sculley's three-phase strategy Apple chairman John Sculley explained Apple's recently announced foray into consumer electronics as the third stage of a three-phase strategy for growing Apple in the 1990s: 1. Compelling computer products. The first stage has been to build momentum in Apple's core business by establishing Apple as a supplier of compelling personal computer products with (for the first time) highly competitive price/performance. Although there is obviously more to do, Sculley believes that Apple has successfully launched this step. 2. Open the corporate market. The next step is to gain a stronger presence in large organizations. To accomplish this, Apple is doing what it thinks it should do to appeal to the traditional mis crowd: mini and mainframe connectivity, data security and the IBM alliance. However, Apple realizes that there is nothing it can do to unseat Microsoft in this market. No matter how hard it tries, it will always be the minority player. 3. Merger of computers, consumer electronics. As we discussed in the first issue of Digital Media, Apple's best hope for getting out from under Microsoft's shadow is an end-run into the new computer/consumer electronics "dream market." Apple has strengths that could give it an edge in this quest: its lead in rich graphical computer applications, its affinity for "user-friendly" hardware/software packages, and brand recognition will have considerable consumer appeal. However, it will need to form alliances with the consumer electronics giants. As is evident from the accompanying article, it is going to face formidable competition from Microsoft in making these alliances. Long live the Macintosh Several years ago, Apple set up two competing system software teams. The Blue team was committed to the evolution of the current Macintosh system software. The Pink team was charged with developing an entirely new, object-oriented operating system. The Pink team has now been sent off to Taligent, the Apple/IBM joint system software venture. The Blue team is left in undisputed charge back at Apple. Taligent was barely mentioned in the system briefing. We heard, instead, about plans for the continued evolution of the Macintosh for as far into the future as anyone could see. Modular software. The biggest change will be a move away from a single "one size fits all" Macintosh operating system to modular system software. There will be a relatively small, compact core of system software, plus a library of add-on modules that support a variety of sophisticated functions. This was probably inevitable. As we move towards an increasingly wide range of personal computer configurations and capabilities, it no longer makes sense to burden every computer with support for functions it will never be called on to perform. Why, for example, should a lightweight notebook computer, which is going to be used for word processing and spreadsheets, give up disk space and memory to support full-motion video on a 24-bit color monitor? However, it means that the once relatively homogeneous Macintosh world is going to start looking more like the PC world. In order to determine whether a given software program will run on a particular Macintosh, you will have to know the hardware and system software configuration of that Mac. It may also mean modular pricing for Apple system software. Right now, you either have to pay $10 to get QuickTime for your Macintosh or you have to buy an application program that includes QuickTime. In the future, you may pay appreciably more for important system software add-ons -- which will make it even less likely that any two Macintoshes are identically equipped. Different software for consumer devices. So far, this sounds as if Apple is moving in more or less the same direction as Microsoft. However, when it comes to consumer products, the two companies diverge. Microsoft, you may recall, is proposing a stripped-down version of Windows as the operating system for consumer devices. Apple contends that the user interface and packaging requirements for consumer devices are so different that a different operating system will be required. Apple expects that the user will be able to move data across the full range of devices from hand-held consumer boxes to robust, networked business computers. It also expects that most software written for the consumer machines will run on Macs (but, most often, not vice-versa). We are not entirely clear what this will mean in practical terms. In the best of all worlds, we will be able to move both data and programs across the full range of devices as easily in the Apple world as in the Microsoft one -- and have the added benefit of a consumer-device operating system that is optimized for these devices. In the worst of all worlds, we will see a proliferation of Apple operating systems (Taligent, Macintosh, consumer products), each developed by a different division (or different company), with somewhat creaky bridges between them. Whither Kaleida? Kaleida, the Apple/IBM joint venture to establish open multi-vendor software and data standards for new media, was mentioned even less than Taligent. Apple did re-affirm that QuickDraw remains Apple (not Kaleida) property. Instead, Apple said that it will transfer to Kaleida "certain QuickTime technologies" to help get Kaleida off the ground. In general, the relationship between the Apple Advanced Technology Group (ATG), the Apple Consumer Division and Kaleida is still confusing. We do not expect to see real clarification until after Apple and IBM have settled on a Kaleida management team and assigned specific people and projects to Kaleida. We keep waiting for this to happen and are concerned about what might be causing the delay. Apple vs. Microsoft We expect to see fierce jockeying for position between Microsoft and Apple/Kaleida in the coming year. They are both courting the same Japanese and domestic partners. The Japanese consumer electronics companies, after some period of uncertainty about what they might have to gain from such alliances, now appear to be very interested. (The consumer electronics market is faltering. It is amazing how a little pain on the bottom line can concentrate the mind.) Apple has interesting technologies and capabilities, but Microsoft has dominance of the PC market and a focused, single-minded intensity that Apple cannot match. Moreover, because it will be offering a stripped-down version of its existing operating system software, rather than a new purpose-built operating system, Microsoft may actually be first into the market. If you were Sony, Matsushita, Nintendo, Sharp, Toshiba or Fujitsu, what would you do? Do you ally yourself with one? Do you experiment with both? Do you do it yourself? Do you sit things out for a while until the technology takes more shape? If the past is any indication, Sony, Matshushita, Nintendo et. al. will have no problem trying a little bit of this and a little bit of that. Apple and Microsoft will be vying to do the best little bits. Jonathan Seybold What Happened To the Interactive Videodisc? An object lesson in how to lose a decade or so Editor's note: On the heels of this month's Multimedia and CD-ROM Expo in San Francisco, where the unbridled (and, we might add, mostly unwarranted) enthusiasm was so thick you needed a scythe to walk the show floor, it might be a good time to take a little walk down memory lane. Cast your mind back, if you will, to the first interactive multimedia format: the Analog Laser Videodisc, which Philips and MCA introduced to the North American market in 1978. The laserdisc, as it came to be called, seemed to have it all: full screen, full motion video (up to two hours per double-sided disc), two tracks of good audio, and, if desired, still color images -- up to 108,000 of them! Videodisc, it was claimed, was the "medium of all media." Then, while Jimmy Carter was still president, Philips, MCA, IBM and Pioneer, in various combinations (does the name DiscoVision Associates ring a bell?), brought out laserdisc players that could be interfaced with the microcomputers of the day, as well as players that were manufactured with internal microprocessors. These made it possible to link the computer's text files, structured databases, computer graphics, and logic with the laserdisc's audiovisual sights and sounds. Now that really was multimedia. It was interactive: the system could respond to the user's input, and could directly retrieve images and sounds. The conjunction of movies, computers and publishing was at hand, as Nich-olas Negroponte of MIT's Media Lab would say and demonstrate. A Japanese electronics company (Pioneer) even got together with a Hollywood studio (Universal) to nudge this development along. Plus ‡a change . . . . What happened? If the world is so hungry for interactive multimedia, shouldn't there be videodisc players connected to computers everywhere by now? How did interactive multimedia make so little impact the first time around? Lesson One: Ignore standards, let platforms multiply endlessly The laserdisc that Philips and its allies introduced and Pioneer ultimately championed, this direct ancestor of the compact disc, this analog laserdisc that in our digital age is only now becoming a hot consumer electronics product, was not the only videodisc in the Age of Disco and Malaise. No, going against the laserdisc were Thomson's incompatible transparent optical disc, RCA's SelectaVision, Matsushita's visc and JVC's VHD. Cross-platform compatibility? Of course not. Consumer confusion? Of course. Furthermore, the technically clunky formats did a certain amount of well-poisoning for the more proficient laserdisc. Burned by an inferior format, customers decided they could wait a decade or so. The class structure. The laserdisc player designers and marketeers decided, in their wisdom, that there would be different classes of video players for different degrees of interactivity. The classes would permit the marketing of inexpensive consumer players for movies, with just basic random access capabilities, and more sophisticated (more expensive) players for digitally controlled interactive training, public access kiosks, etc. (This sounds like Sony's latest announcement of a whole range of CD-ROM drives, all with different prices --and access times -- which assures title developers that they have no assurance whatsoever how a single disc will run across a number of drives.) First there's Level I . . . Level I interactivity (as labeled by the University of Nebraska Videodisc Group) used no digital data to guide the user. If the user knew the desired chapter number or frame number, he/she could play the desired segment by punching in its address on a remote control device. On more recent Level I players, a barcode scanner can read the address information from barcode stripes on a printed page. Mercifully, Level I format laserdiscs have remained quite compatible across the various manufacturers' players. It is true that there is a difference between standard play (CAV) discs, which allow access to each frame for still-frame display and special effects capabilities, and extended play (CLV) discs, which trade off those features for doubling the motion video playing time, but all laserdisc players can accept both of these formats. Poor image support. One problem that was never really solved was that there was never a standardized or wholly satisfactory way to deliver audio messages in conjunction with a still image, other than shooting the still as if it were a moving image. Coupled with the surprisingly high cost of capturing still images onto the analog laserdisc format, videodisc developers were pushed toward high cost motion video or film material. Next there's Level II . . . Level II was also never standardized. It was the one-box multimedia appliance solution of its day, the CD-I or CDTV of 1979. With an internal microprocessor and a tiny amount of ram, it was hoped that enough data could be read from one of the videodisc's audio tracks to present the user menus or choices in proper sequence, and link them to disc segments. Underpowered and nonstandard, the Level II device, in theory, eliminated the need for a separate computer, but it was never given the intelligence and flexibility to replace a computer. It also couldn't offer a price advantage over the plummeting costs of PCs and Macs. (Let's see . . . a PC clone today costs around $700, just about the retail cost of CD-I . . . . ) And finally, Level III. Then there was Level III -- the configuration that required interfacing a general-purpose desktop computer and a laserdisc player. From a compatibility standpoint, it was a nightmare. For years there was no standard communications port built into Level III players, no hardware or software standard interface on the computer side and no standard computer platform. There was no uniformity on such basic matters as how the user would input data (touchscreen, remote keypad, keyboard, mouse, lightpen), or how the video from the laserdisc and the screen display of the computer would relate to each other. (One or two screens? Which genlock or overlay board? Video windows on the computer screen or computer output on the video monitor?) No titles bandwagon. The lack of standards not only slowed down the investment in videodisc hardware but also retarded the development of a library of commercial titles, useful beyond just one enterprise, which would have helped the installed base to grow. Are we seeing a replay of the platform chaos of the first decade of interactive videodisc with today's digital multimedia formats? MPC, Mac CD-ROM, Ultimedia, CD-I etc? It certainly has a familiar feel at times. Lesson Two: Sell it to the public as a movie playback system It is only recently that laserdisc players have caught the public's eye as movie players, now that they are sold for as little as $350 and are marketed as combination players that also play cd-audio. As a home entertainment product, the laserdisc system had been dormant for a decade. Movies-on-disc was a seductive concept. In fact, it was the driving vision of the developers of a dozen or more different disc systems, going back to 1928: photographic, phonographic, magnetic, capacitive, holographic, laser-optical, you name it. The laserdisc, however, as a movie medium had to compete with an explosion of film access: motion picture theaters and broadcast television had been joined by cable TV and the half-inch tape VCR, in both vhs and Beta. Quality, yes, but it couldn't record. The laserdisc had significantly better video quality and audio quality than the home VCR, but it could not record. The public wanted the recording capability to time-shift TV programs and to make home videos with cameras and camcorders (as well as to make pirate copies of movies). The typical home or consumer videodisc title was a movie to be shown at Level 0 interactivity: sequential play, start-to-finish. Thus, any potential advantages of the videodisc's random access capabilities over videotape cassettes were ignored, even though they were built into the players. Could this have been a marketing mistake? As far as computer-controlled interaction, it is only now, in 1992, that Pioneer and Sony are offering Level III players to consumers and industrial customers. Level III players can be connected via a serial port in the player to a PC, Macintosh or other desktop system. No "need to own" factor. Definitely a marketing mistake was the fact that videodisc titles were marketed to be purchased by consumers, not rented, while videocassette titles were widely rented at a much lower cost. (Movies were not, and are not, it seems, "need to own" items in the same way that music titles are.) Lesson Three: Oversell the benefits of interactivity While the laserdisc's random access capabilities were pretty much ignored in consumer marketing, the magic of interactivity was the sizzle for all other applications. Unfortunately, many of the first interactive videodisc applications seem to have been designed by people enamored of the technology who lacked the necessary design and content skills. Often the questions of where -- or whether -- interactivity would be helpful were not well considered. The benefits of producing an interactive videodisc versus a printed manual or an ordinary "linear" videotape for a particular application is an example. Irrelevant and inappropriate. In theory, interactivity means that the user/learner doesn't have to sit through irrelevant or inappropriate material. In practice, however, it is easy to have too much interactivity: too much navigation in hyperspace without orienting guidance, too many checks for progress and understanding of the material, too much fragmentation of the material rather than coherent flow. Interactivity itself became irrelevant and inappropriate. The key problem was adding value: how to show that interactivity increased the effectiveness of the audiovisual material, or that pictures and sounds added to the effectiveness of the computer-based programs. As is often the case with a new technology, the first interactive videodisc titles were often transfers of old models, like text-oriented, computer-based training, or conventional videotapes, to the new medium. No wonder people called the medium "interrupted video." We are obviously seeing an "old wine in new bottles" phenomenon with CD-ROM and digital multimedia, and experiencing the same issues all over again. Lesson Four: Make it difficult and expensive to produce for the new medium Producing for interactive media is more expensive than producing for linear media, since you have to add the cost of designing and programming the interactive aspects to the cost of producing the linear footage. In the early years of interactive videodisc, high-level authoring languages were not available. It was also hard to simulate the final product, since a recordable disc, or a process for stamping an inexpensive checkdisc, did not exist. Adding to the difficulty was the need to form teams that would combine several kinds of expertise that had not been combined before: computer programming, media production, instructional design, teaching or marketing experience, and content knowledge. Lesson Five: Create a complicated, costly delivery system, with lots of hardware and a complex user interface The first Level III interactivity videodisc user stations cost about $10,000 each, including the computer and player. For corporate training, these could usually only serve one trainee at a time, given the need for interactivity and the small screens. Training groups of people in system-filled rooms required a major corporate commitment to the technology, which took years to generate. This could not be more true for today's digital multimedia. A developer remarked not long ago that "multimedia is anything that requires more than one trip to the car" to bring in the equipment. Although hardware packages such as the Multimedia PC are changing that equation, a solidly operational, high-quality multimedia system is still right up there with the first Level II interactive videodisc stations. The brighter side, in brief This is not to say that all is lost. The videodisc is alive and well in training and education, where developers have learned that a little interactivity goes a long way, and that Level I can often be quite effective in the classroom. In addition, standard platforms and authoring languages, such as HyperCard for the Macintosh and IBM's InfoWindow for the PC, are powerful tools that keep the medium from stagnating. And despite its own lesser brilliance in a digital world, interactive videodisc applications have already greatly influenced digital multimedia products. They have given producers an idea of what was possible if producers could not only play back data, but manipulate it and have real-time casual, conversational and professional interactions with it. It's far easier to "roll your own" CD-ROM than it ever was to press your own laserdisc, a feature that has already provided great economies of scale for the industry. And as computers and consumer electronics converge, some platform will likely emerge in sufficient volume to keep the industry moving forward. But it can only lead to disaster if the multimedia industry ignores the lessons that are right under its nose -- and there are plenty of them to choose from. Every single one of the lessons outlined here map directly to the new multimedia craze. It seems abundantly clear, however, given the "Tally ho!" attitude of most people and companies in multimedia today, that no one is paying attention. We respectfully submit that it might behoove them to do so. Bernard Banet News SMPTE task force makes strides New proposal levels vendors' playing field A crucial element of all digital media, especially in the emerging HDTV and high-resolution systems (hrs) industries, is how to label images and other data streams so that signals can be shared by different systems with minimal degradation and confusion. In 11 months, a Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) task force reached a consensus on far-reaching implementations on these labels, called header/descripters. The proposal could support new standards to accommodate even inexpensive equipment (such as NTSC standard TVs and Apple II computers) presently incapable of decoding all possible data streams while allowing for technological advances in equipment (HDTV or high-resolution imaging) or recorded signals. A powerful consensus. The committee, chaired by Will Stackhouse of the Jet Propulsion Lab, had representatives from the computer, the telecommunications and the imaging and video conferencing industries, as well as several MIT professors and consultants. It is this broad technical base that makes the committee's consensus so powerful. The committee settled on the use of the evolving iso/ccitt Abstract Syntax Notation 1 (called ASN.1), which provides an extensible notation for describing data that is to be exchanged by transmission or storage. Although started as a computer standard, it permits the same information to be interpreted in different ways within different technologies. As the committee's final report says, "To the video industry, the information is a continuous video stream. To the telecommunications industry, the same information is a sequence of bits to be transmitted. To the computer industry, that sequence of bits is interpreted as data structures." Embedding structures. ASN.1 is much like an envelope containing a single video frame but allowing for the embedding of one or more data structures within another. The header identifies by number the encoding standard employed, specifies the data's length, permits users to intercept data streams at random times and provides optional error-protection and encryption capability. When Rita Brennan of Apple presented the task force's recommendations to the Intellectual Property Task Force of the International Multimedia Association (IMA) on March 9, it was this ability to permit independent, formal definition of intellectual property protection, encrpytion, and other source-coding descripters that got the audience's attention and approval. What does it mean? This consensus has been called "the most important SMPTE implementation since the NTSC television standard was developed 40 years ago." It means that the film, imaging, television, computer and telecommunications industries are converging on a means of sharing digital signals among media in compact, universal, extensible ways that take into account the inadequacies of some implementations while not slowing the move to higher resolution and bandwidth solutions. It probably means that the digital television of the future will have a '386 or better cpu to handle these headers on the fly, and a three- or four-megabyte buffer to hold the frame as the header is being handled. In short, the television will become a computer. Until now, out of the loop The computer and imaging industries have felt left out of the visual standards-making process with the SMPTE and FCC focusing on film and television for suggestions and implementation. But this SMPTE committee, and the work of the Committee for High Resolution Systems (which addresses the need for a digital video standard for HDTV), show that these industries are no longer taking a back seat to film and TV. They have successfully pushed for the establishment of a High-Resolution Information Systems Advisory Board that was authorized by President Bush in February. The act finds what many of us have known for years: that computers have increasingly sophisticated video and digital imaging signal processing capabilities; that the core technolgies required for high-resolution imaging are similar to digital television, video, telecommunications and the computer industry; and that associated telecommunications and transportable storage media are generally designed to support digital interoperability similar to digital imaging products and services. This advisory board, authorized to analyze a broad range of information on standards and protocols for "the interoperability and harmonization of electronic high resolution imaging, high definition television, and basic telecommunications services," is a great platform to ensure that the imaging and computer industries are taken seriously in the the digital standards and implementation arenas. Tom Hargadon Everybody's doin' it CD-ROM Expo is an orgy of industry alliances Finally, all those years of talking to themselves at industry conferences may be paying off. The most exciting overall trend at this year's Multimedia and CD-ROM Expo in San Francisco was an unmistakable rush by vendors to improve cross-platform compatibility and broaden their support for standards across the board. All the major players, and a few minor ones as well, were jumping on the alliance bandwagon. What a lineup! Microsoft will add DVI support to Windows by adding a Digital Video command set to its Media Control Interface (MCI). Asymetrix will build a developer's kit for DVI. IBM will add DVI support for DOS machines, with its LinkWay Live and Photomation software. (IBM has already been supporting DVI on its OS/2 Ultimedia systems.) Microsoft's Multimedia Viewer software will enable the development of CD-ROMs that can be read on the new Sony portable CD-ROM/XA computer as well as on the MPC platform. Apple's QuickTime will support Kodak's Photo cd images, enabling them to be brought directly into Macintosh applications. Optimage, Philips's CD-I tool company, will introduce tools to permit developers to cross-convert CD-I and MPC titles. MediaVision's Motive will permit development of cd's with compressed full motion video that can be shared across platforms, including Sun, Silicon Graphics, Macintosh and PC systems. Apple has -- and may ship, it's being cagey about it -- a QuickTime player for Microsoft Windows. IBM, Texas Instruments and Intermetrics will jointly develop Mwave, a new digital signal processor (dsp) chip for DOS, Windows and os/2 systems, which will replace several hardware boards. Designed to be able to process speech, music, motion video and still images simultaneously, Mwave will provide the kind of concurrent processing power that may be needed for future multimedia applications. Video: cheap and free Intel announced that it was making its specifications for DVI Real Time Video (RTV) available for zero-royalty licensing. At the same time, the company said that it was submitting RTV to the Interactive Multimedia Association for consideration as a compressed video standard. The IMA will only consider "open" or non-proprietary technology, and is evaluating candidates for cross-platform digital audio standards. It is likely to endorse a range of options that can mesh with quality requirements and computer horsepower. Chips and software. One way to widen the appeal of multimedia is to lower the cost barriers to turning already-installed computers into multimedia-capable ones. Software motion video decompression is a way to accomplish this. IBM, for example, announced its Photomation developer's kit for software-decompressed motion video applications. Photomation will support resolutions as high as IBM's xga video display standard. To improve the quality of color images on garden-variety vga-resolution monitors, Tandy announced a video chip that will support a color depth of 16 million colors on its MPC monitors, a vast improvement over the usual 256 colors. Though the company didn't announce a price for the chip, Tandy's Howard Elias said it would be "real cheap." Also toward the goal of facilitating system upgrades, MediaVision announced Audioport, a digital audio module that plugs into a parallel port instead of taking up a slot. Representative of other trends, both JVC and Philips showed increasingly affordable one-off recordable CD-R (cds) publishing systems. In a hardware development that would represent an important breakthrough, Pioneer announced that its new six-disc CD-ROM changer would support data transfer rates four times faster than previous drives, at 600 mb per second. This could end some of the frustrating time delays experienced when using CD-ROMs, and may affect the evolution of digital video on cd. All in all, a disappointment But it must be said that despite a lot of activity on the show floor, there were no "hot" or "must-see" products. What would have been the whizziest demonstrations at the CD-ROM Expo were rumored to be faked -- leading us to the conclusion that we still have a very long way to go before we reach multimedia heaven (or even limbo, at this rate). What still works best on a CD-ROM are text databases, and despite its more pedestrian nature, this category is still the most successful -- and the most utilitarian -- for the technology. Of course, there was plenty of evidence and even more rumors about industry alliances to come, for everything from co-development of consumer products to disc compatibility across platforms. One must wonder when disc-based "multimedia" products -- today still slow and of limited or unfathomable utility -- will live up to the hype and expectations. Maybe next year . . . ? Bernard Banet, Denise Caruso Sony unveils Bookman, at last A vast and obvious improvement over the DataDiscman After many months of industry speculation, Sony announced the development of its portable CD-ROM/XA player, code-named Bookman, at the CD-ROM Expo in San Francisco. Bookman addresses many of the glaring problems of its older sibling, the ill-conceived DataDiscman (see Vol. 1, No. 8, p. 7). First, it's based on industry-standard hardware and software -- MS-DOS and a clone of the Intel 8088 chip, the NEC V-20 -- and plays standard-sized 12cm read-only and audio cds. In addition, its 4.5-inch monochrome flat-panel display is both backlit (an absolute requirement for devices of this type) and larger than the DataDiscman's, though based on the elderly mcga graphics standard that displays only seven shades of gray. Nonetheless, it is able to display graphics, maps and crude digitized photographs, and has two sets of built-in fonts, in three sizes, with upper- and lower-case letters (there is a god). Yes, it plays audio CDs The player has an NTSC video-out port for display on any television, and includes a mono speaker and a stereo headphone jack. In addition to rom disks, the player also play standard audio cds -- something that the DataDiscman could not do, despite the fact that it was a product of Sony's audio division. The player is scheduled for release sometime in the fall, at a price to be determined. If this sounds a bit vague, it's because Sony is treating the Bookman's Expo unveiling only as a "technology announcement" -- a step slightly above public acknowledgment, slightly below a christening. Sony has put aside for the moment its well-documented collaborations with Apple to partner with Microsoft on this product. Microsoft's DOS operating system is encoded in the firmware and Microsoft's Viewer authoring tool is designed for easily creating interactive titles for the player (see Microsoft story, p. 3). Takashi Sugiyama, the Sony manager in charge of developer relations for Bookman in the U.S., says very little revision is required to adapt existing MS-DOS CD-ROMs for the Bookman. The most significant is that most CD-ROM titles can dump up to 10 mb of index data onto a hard disk that the Bookman obviously does not have. In addition, screen drivers must be rewritten to adjust for Bookman's 320L200-pixel resolution. But, he says, virtually no change in data structure is required. Given its technical capabilities, Bookman will mostly be playing the same kind of titles that were available on the DataDiscman, but they will look and work much better. The search and retrieval software provided in the Viewer authoring tool is easy for the developer, yet extremely sophisticated for the user. Though billed as a "multimedia" as well as a "personal information" device, Sugiyama acknowledges that Bookman's multimedia capabilities will always play a supporting role to the textual information in Bookman titles. Links between portions of text, or between text and graphics, can be created by the developer, who is not locked into a poor retrieval engine seared into the roms. Sony is also collaborating with Mammoth Micro Productions on a version of its Mammoth Tool System and runtime player, which will allow developers to create and play back interleaved data, like synchronized audio and data. Designed for the U.S. market In fairness to Sony, the DataDiscman was never designed for the American market; it was an error in judgment that brought it to the U.S. shores in the first place. But everyone's entitled to a mistake or two, especially a company that is willing to take risks the way Sony is. The Bookman, on the other hand, was developed especially for American markets, with PC compatibility high on the priority list. Development will not stop here. Although Sony officials would not go on record as saying so, the Bookman (or whatever they decide to call it -- "Bookman" is actually a great name) will ultimately sport a color display as well as color output, making it a portable competitor to CD-I-like devices, but one that runs the same system software as tens of millions of office and home computers. David Baron, Denise Caruso Designing TV for interactivity Is Young Indiana Jones the first of a new breed? By now, we have all become accustomed to the concept, at least, of "repurposed" video. Since the possibilities of digital videos began presenting themselves, this concept was one of the most attractive to owners of archival footage: someone takes video originally shot for traditional narrative movies, documentaries or news stories and reuses it as the basis for an interactive product. Born to be clicked This, of course, is much more trouble than actually designing a production for interactivity in the first place. George Lucas's Young Indiana Jones TV series, currently showing on ABC, may be the first of a new breed of "pre-purposed" television shows and movies. The TV series was filmed specifically so that Lucas would have footage for a subsequent interactive educational product. Lucas -- who has, after all, formed an educational foundation in his name -- knew that the educational market could never support the cost of filming the story framework he wanted to use for his educational titles. So, he struck a deal with ABC which pays him $27 million for the first 17 episodes and contains an option for 22 more episodes to be aired next year. Both parties win: ABC gets a "name" show (it has also been pre-sold in a number of overseas markets), and Lucas gets the footage he wants for the story framework for his interactive video. Savings via digital techniques. To film a historical drama (set in 1908 and 1917) in fifteen countries at $1.6 million per episode, Lucas has had to use some new production and post-production techniques. These techniques include heavy use of digital effects. For example, a dozen mounted cavalry soldiers are digitally replicated into an army of 500 soldiers. Scenes filmed in London, Paris and Vienna are digitally edited to remove modern artifacts and restore the scene to the proper 1908 or 1917 appearance. These techniques, most of them being used in a television series for the first time, may have considerable impact on future video production. In television, as in film, it is increasingly becoming less expensive to apply some digital magic than it is to build sets, manipulate models, create monsters or blow things up. The downside. The problem with most repurposed video is that it is not very interactive. The linear nature of the original material shows through. However, the problem with the initial episodes of Young Indiana Jones is just the opposite: its future use as a framework for an interactive work shows through, too. The story is constructed to introduce you to as many famous people, important events and interesting places as possible. In an interactive title, having George Patton or T.E. Lawrence pop up improbably is just what you want. It provides the "hooks" to which all manner of additional material can be linked. But in a narrative film, it just seems silly and pretentious. Maybe the later episodes will get better. But in any event, you may expect very soon to hear much more news about film studios, producers and broadcasters starting interactive projects in the pre-production stage as they become entranced with the concept. Lucas, who has been working on the Young Indiana Jones project for two years, is certainly the pioneer. Let's hope that he and others quickly learn how to refine the concept. Jonathan Seybold HyperCard drama What will happen to the world's least costly multimedia authoring system? HyperCard is far from dead, but rumors that it will no longer be bundled with the Macintosh may be true -- at least, sort of, according to industry insiders. Claris Corp., Apple's software arm that took over marketing of the product from Apple a year and a half ago, emphatically denied reports that it plans to stop its HyperCard development efforts and only release maintenance versions. The rumors were prompted in part by the recent departures of several key HyperCard team members: Mike Holm, HyperCard product line marketing manager who had been working on the product since its introduction in 1987; Bill Duvall, director of HyperCard development; and Tom Hammer, manager of stackware and testing. HyperCard product manager Bob Gregg said that the new version is "well along in development." Developers are saying they expect HyperCard 2.5 to be shipped in May with, among other things, color painting tools, some performance improvements and the ability to play QuickTime movies. They've got a lot of nerve But Claris's continued endorsement has not swayed some Apple executives, who want the end-user version of HyperCard "out of the box," arguing that it was too complicated a piece of software to bundle with every Macintosh. This is a remarkably obtuse statement coming from a company that spends countless millions hyping the Macintosh as a powerful tool for individual productivity, and from the company that started the personal computer revolution in part by shipping the Applesoft Basic programming language with the Apple II in the mid-1970s. When HyperCard was shipped in 1987, many industry watchers drew an approving parallel between the two products, calling HyperCard "Basic for the '90s," because both allowed regular people, not just members of the computer priesthood, to create their own software that actually worked. Some history for the uninitiated. HyperCard was designed by former Apple Fellow Bill Atkinson, a member of the original Mac team (who's now at General Magic building personal communication devices), to be a powerful user interface builder, development environment and database for "the rest of us." HyperCard allows users to move through data quickly and it is easily extended to control devices such as videodisc players and CD-ROM drives. HyperCard was first to allow easy incorporation of multiple data types, including animation and sound, into programs and presentations. It boasted an easy-to-read, powerful scripting language called HyperTalk that made it simple to control and manipulate chunks of data. And it was specifically designed so that non-programmers could quickly model and build their own interfaces and working applications. These and other features led to its standing as the de facto authoring tool for most early multimedia projects. Some companies--most notably, The Voyager Company--still use HyperCard because it is shipped with the Macintosh, providing them with an instant and inexpensive software platform for their products. The simplicity of the interface, as well as its ubiquity, endeared HyperCard to the nation's teachers, who to date are still the largest body of HyperCard developers. For some, a player isn't enough The conflict is just another in a long line of corporate disagreements and rejections of HyperCard since before it was announced in 1987. Despite early enthusiasm, HyperCard was never exactly dear to the hearts of certain Apple executives, who before it was released attempted on countless occasions to insist -- completely in vain -- that Apple either charge for the product or increase its capabilities beyond that of a base-level Macintosh. (These suggestions were roundly rejected by Atkinson.) From the start, third-party software developers complained that giving away powerful software for free soured the market for people trying to sell it, and that HyperCard itself broke most of the Macintosh's much ballyhooed user interface conventions. In 1990, Claris -- which took over the development and marketing of HyperCard from Apple --decided it was too costly to continue shipping the fully functioning version of HyperCard in the box with the Macintosh. Out in the cold. "In the box" proponents argue that HyperCard was the basis for the information products industry and that Apple would be leaving HyperCard developers out in the cold if they stopped bundling it with the Mac. According to one HyperCard developer, Apple executives reached a tentative compromise early this month: although the end-user version of HyperCard will no longer be bundled with the Mac, Claris will develop a HyperCard player that Apple will include on disk along with the Mac system software. "If that's the way it's going to be, I and other members of the HyperCard development community will be disappointed," said Danny Goodman, author of several HyperCard books and coordinator of a letter- writing campaign in January to get Claris to market and promote HyperCard. "HyperCard in one form or another has to be given away to users. I'd much rather see the player, though, than nothing at all." Goodman, who says more than 100 HyperCard supporters wrote to Claris, would like to see HyperCard returned to Apple and developed along with Macintosh system software. While some end-user version of HyperCard would continue to be bundled free with Macintoshes, the developer version and other HyperCard tools could be sold through APDA, Apple's developers association. "If HyperCard is in fact a strategic advantage for Apple and the Mac, then it's future should be in the hands of Apple. It needs to evolve with the operating system," Goodman said, admitting that his plan may be "an impractical ideal from a business standpoint." At the very least, though, Goodman hopes to see a little more enthusiasm for the product from both Claris and Apple. "What I think the HyperCard community is asking for is that there be some overt commitment to HyperCard and to put some excitement back into HyperCard as it once had. (HyperCard author) Bill Atkinson was the big promoter at first, but there's no one fulfilling that role now. There's no champion at a high level." Connie Guglielmo, Denise Caruso HD MAC is dead Europeans give up on hybrid high-definition TV standard The European attempt at a high-definition television standard, known as HD MAC, is basically dead. Fueled by more than a billion dollars of funding from the European Community (EC), the effort by Thomson and Philips was a mixed analog/digital system that was being pushed as an alternative to the NHK/Sony MUSE system from Japan and the various digital standards being tested in the United States. The standard never showed any advantages over the NHK/Sony system and was considered outmoded by those who felt that any new standard had to be digital (see Vol. 1, No. 1, p. 13). The money's all gone In early December, the EC refused to accept HD MAC as its preferred standard and put Thomson and Philips on notice that funds would not be forthcoming for major development. The French and Dutch firms made strenuous efforts to show that HD MAC was a system that could be implemented and deserved continued support. At a February conference in Luxembourg, called "HDTV in the Marketplace; the Commercial Opportunities," speakers from both Thomson and Philips were under constant attack from United Kingdom, Germany and Astra (the EC's advanced TV consortium) delegates. It became clear that the HD MAC standard had very little backing from technical experts in other countries. Moving forward to digital. On the last day of the conference, it was learned that the relevant EC funding committees had held an emergency meeting and voted 11-1 to withdraw funding from HD MAC developments. (Other EC HDTV efforts, Race and Eureka, continue to receive some funding.) The EC decision is to move forward with digital video standards development. Richard Solomon, project manager of DARPA's Advanced Imaging program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and keynote speaker at the Luxembourg conference, applauded this decision, but noted that Europe is at least two years behind the United States in digital video standards. Partners in setting standards The Europeans do not want to give either the Japanese or the Americans any advantages. They would like to be considered as partners in setting any new video standards. Political leaders seem to assume that whoever sets a standard has a head start in implementing that standard. So, the pressure persists for independent implementations in Japan, the U.S. and Europe. What U.S. partisans of digital video hope is that any standard is open and extensible, so other standards can be developed over time and integrated into a coherent system that allows all standards to coexist. The Europeans and the Japanese could thus accept a U.S.-designated digital video standard for the near term while working on more advanced standards for future deployment without fear of being shut out. The SMPTE header/descriptor standard that allows such extensible multiple standards to be transmitted and handled at the terminal/television level (see Vol. 1, No. 4, p. 12) is a major step forward in alleviating European and Japanese concerns. Tom Hargadon NTU's National Videoconference on Multimedia On April 14, National Technology University (NTU) will begin a live national broadcast of a four-part videoconference series focusing on the potential of multimedia in the classroom, the workplace and the home. Broadcasts of "Multimedia: The Emerging Giant -- New Tools for New Times" are expected to reach a national audience of hundreds, and potentially thousands, of students and professionals. While panelists gather at one location, participants at more than 380 of NTU's corporate, government and university-sponsored receiving sites will view the live transmission and telephone in questions and comments. Fifteen industry pundits -- from top multimedia companies such as Apple, MacroMind and The Voyager Company (and commentators such as Seybold's Digital Media editor Denise Caruso) -- will address the status and future of multimedia. Interactive presentations on emerging multimedia technology will be part of the broadcast. An ambitious agenda will explore experimental multimedia applications in the workplace, such as the Palo Alto project team leader who is coordinating the contact and activities of distant factory workers via videocameras and online databases. CD-ROMs bearing museum archives, computer simulations of jet fighter attacks, instrumented gloves and head-mounted stereoscopic displays represent some other important social applications to be discussed. A total of twelve sessions are scheduled for broadcast over the NTU network on April 14, 21, 28 and May 5. Each broadcast will open with a panel addressing issues including emerging national and international standards, getting started in multimedia, potential markets and the future of multimedia technology. The NTU, based in Fort Collins, CO, is the first electronic university in the U.S. specializing in satellite broadcasting of advanced engineering and technical education. Individuals and organizations can register for any of the twelve sessions. For more information contact NTU at 700 Centre Ave., Fort Collins, CO 80526; (303) 484-6050, fax (303) 484-0501. Amy Johns I/O Readers Respond What about the author? As a cartoonist and writer who has worked almost exclusively in ink and paper for publication in books and magazines, I was fascinated by the most recent issue of Digital Media. The discussion about the relevancy of current copyright laws to network transmission of literary works (and eventually, I suppose, sub-literary works like comic books) was something of which everyone in traditional media needs to be aware. The prospect of instant access to text is an obvious occasion for excitement and delight, and it doubtless seems craven to raise any further obstacles to this modern miracle than already exist, yet I was more than mildly alarmed to note that in your article "Electronic Publishing on the 'Net'," you represented the argument over publication rights as if it were a matter only between one kind of publisher (electronic) on one hand and another kind of publisher (antediluvian print purveyor) on the other. Nowhere is the poor artist or writer who creates the material to be found. In book publishing, it is almost the universal practice for the author to retain the copyright to a work, as well as every other ancillary right his or her rapacious agents and lawyers can get hold of, including transmission by electronic media and indeed "all rights not yet imagined." Therefore, when it comes time to put literature on the net, it is the authors (and their agents and lawyers), not only the traditional publishers (and their agents and lawyers), who will need to be consulted. We of course hope for royalty arrangements that compare favorably with those we already enjoy in the print business. Indeed, because electronic distribution can instantly credit a royalty account when a transmission is made, we tremblingly entertain the possibility that royalty statements may arrive sooner and more often than the biannual checks from book publishers, which issue them three, and sometimes four, months after the royalty period has ended. From the author's point of view, the distinction between publisher and lending library is also considerably less distinct than it is to the publisher. Unlike a traditional publisher, who has to crank up the presses, order paper and ink, pay press operators and binderies when it's time to reprint, the author's work is done long before a book even appears. We then sit back (after the promotional tour) and hope that our labors will be rewarded in proportion to the demand for the book. If accounting is done by books lent or books shipped, it should make no difference to us. In the United States, it unfortunately does make an immense difference, because we receive no royalties from library loans, but a number of European countries provide for payments to authors whenever their books are checked out. I hope that electronic publishers envision a future with author compensation for every access. I also believe that the best way to protect the creator's interests is for author organizations to take a position on the question and let it be known. But first they have to know that there is a question. In the meantime, let's hope that a brilliant hacker develops a simulation of the musty smell of old books. Larry Gonick San Francisco, CA