Cable, digital, set top box. Cable, digital, set top box

1999-05-13

This is becoming a bit of a mantra. More digital TV alliances have been made over the last day, this time between Microsoft and C&W, and AOL with a whole bunch of hardware and digital TV providers. At the risk of stating the obvious, things are hotting up.

Real soon now, as the saying goes, digital TV is going to get popular and all those predictions analysts have been making for years will come true. At least, that’s the assumption being made by the giants and the little people amongst the vendors (and they’re putting billions of dollars against this horse). The Internet really, finally, will leave the domain of the propellorhead and enter the mass market. Your grandmother really will be sending email and checking bus times on the browser.

Fortunately, contrary to previous expectations, it seems (as reported on silicon.com) that Europe is catching up the US in terms of internet access. At least, business executives over here are using the Web nearly as much as over there. European users results in European internet entrepreneurs. So maybe, just maybe, when the dam does break, we won’t find ourselves entirely dependent on stateside services when we should quite reasonably be depending on our own.

(First published 13 May 1999)