Software via television wasn't actually that new. Back in the mid 80s, a german TV-show named Computerclub aired text files in the blanking intervalls during the show. They were publishing schematics, so you could build your own decoder. In the early they switched to a new system allowing them to transmit data at a higher speed. At the same time commercial station ProSieben also started to air those Videodat signals. Later there was a service using the horizontal blanking intervalls, but not with digital television all of those things have died.

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Well, not at Computer Chronicles, but I worked for Microware from 1995-2001 and I remember watching this episode when it first aired. There are two segments that featured our products -- after the first cable download segment there is a tradeshow piece that interviewed a guy I worked with, then back in the studio there was Arthur and a full demo. If you compare the DAVID demo with the one shown after it, you will see how far ahead the Microware technology was at the time.



This time capsule is impressive in the fact that it showed things like Cable Modems (now pretty commonplace) as well as other "wow, that's a great idea" things that STILL haven't gotten off the ground. Video on Demand (with pause, rewind, etc.) is something that most of us are STILL waiting on, and the intro segment about downloading programs during a TV show seems like a great idea even in 2003.



"Smart TV" is still in its infancy, even though we can see it's been around a long, long time... Just not where we could use it.

- January 23, 2003I was there :-)