Chapter 1. Market Drivers

This chapter covers the following topics:

• Analog TV

• Digital TV

• Interactive TV

• Video on Demand

• Near Video on Demand

• World Wide Web

• Convergence of Digital TV and the Internet

• Datacasting

• Games

• Funding Models

Consumers receive a variety of services over multiple networks to the home today. They receive voice and data services over telephone networks, and they receive broadcast television services through cable TV networks and over the air. As technologies for the computer, entertainment, and communications industries converge to digital infrastructures, leaders in government and industry are contemplating the development of residential broadband (RBB) networks that will deliver these same services—and new services—to the home.