Benefits Of Interactivity

By Author: Roy Claus
Total Articles: 9
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Interactivity is one of the great inventions of the modern technology. It is the natural progress of the evolutions of media and information that eventually gave us such great things like - games and interactive television. In case of the Interactive TV it is closely tied to the internet and digital TV which represent a whole new generation of TV with new functions and possibilities. As non TV example, one of the new steps for the interactivity is the new Kinect system released for the xBox console. The system captures the user and allows him to control the virtual hero by the means of his movements. A serious step if we take the first pong game which was simple platforms a ball and two joysticks for control.

To understand the benefits of interactivity it is important to understand the nature of the information itself. Due to curiosity of each human being any information can be tweaked by the means of interactivity. It can be used for both useful information, educational information and entertaining information. Let's look at all three examples by taking the Internet TV as a platform.

Useful Information
The ...
... best example here is everyday news. It is natural that lots of news are somehow tied together by previous events, by region or by main figures. If you happened to miss the beginning of this story or just lack the information to understand the meaning of the described event - you can always get the needed info by the means of interactive TV. Second example is combining custom news with the help of interactivity. By means of interactive TV the viewer is able to pick the topics, regions, countries of any other type of informational filters to receive only the news he or she is interested in.

Educational Information
This is probably one of the broadest fields for interactivity. Any educational program, like the ones you see on discovery channel, can be literally filled with additional info. Currently such programs only offer limited information because of their time span and format. But if we add interactive TV and the ability to pause the broadcast to read some clarifications or extra info - this will turn the educational programs into something really futuristic and super educational.

Entertaining Information
Entertainment offers probably the best possibilities for interactivity up to turning entertainment broadcasts into full scale interactive movies like some of the latest releases for PlayStation 3 and xBox. All types of talk shows can be raised to a new level if there will be a real possibility to get live in studio and not just in form of voice, but in form of a picture. The TV series would become something completely new by getting plots which depend from the voting of the viewers in live mode. Literally all types of entertainment will change, like it happened after the invention of video games for example.

Nevertheless the Internet TV and Interactive TV still have a number of financial obstacles in their successful path. Still nothing can really stop them, because they are the future.

Interactivity is the future, so getting internet en televisie today is the only way out! Don't wait and get the possibility not only to watch the world today but to interact with the world by the means of your TV set.