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> 2) Zum Nachdenken (entspricht ein solches Angebot den Kundenwünschen?) > Surfing With AOLTV > http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/18/technology/18STAT.html?pag… da die nytimes eine User-Registrierung verlangt, stell ich mal den kompletten Artikel hier rein. Quizfrage: Ist bei sowas ein Erfolg oder eher ein Flop nicht geradezu prädestiniert? Und im Fall Primacom hofft man, mit solchen Fernseher-zentrierten Angeboten in einigen Jahren (derzeit geht es ja zum Glück für die Primacom-Aktionäre angesichts der unzureichenden Netzaufrüstung gar nicht) noch Märkte erschließen zu wollen... January 18, 2001 STATE OF THE ART Surfing With AOLTV By DAVID POGUE THE desire to combine everyday machines into a single all-purpose gadget must be one of the most basic human instincts, right up there with finding food, seeking shelter and avoiding eye contact in elevators. How else to explain the clock radio, the toaster oven and the Flowbee vacuum-haircutting tool? America Online has recently given in to this often misguided instinct and created another appliance that combines television with the Internet. Its new set- top box, called AOLTV, is in the same category as Microsoft`s WebTV, which delivers a compromised but inexpensive version of the Internet to ordinary television sets. WebTV sales have been consistent, year in and year out. Consistently lousy, that is. But AOL had several reasons to believe that it could do better. For one, it has 26 million members, each already familiar with AOL`s features. And AOL has massive media marketing muscle, which will become even more frightening now that its merger with Time Warner has been approved. AOL also has a killer idea, a feature so ingenious that it alone could have made AOLTV succeed where WebTV failed: the ability to chat with fellow viewers, thus endowing the solitary act of watching television with the communal joy of watching movies in a theater. You and your cyberpals could play along with quiz shows, critique the stars` outfits on awards shows and triple the fun of shows like "Survivor," especially during commercials. Alas, somewhere between the whiteboard and the assembly line, most of AOL`s good ideas wound up lost in the circuitry of an overpriced, undertested product that gives mediocrity a bad name. The black metal box itself, manufactured by Philips, costs $250. If you`re not already an AOL member, an AOLTV account is $25 per month and lets you connect to the service only from your television, but you can also check your e- mail via a Web site. If you already have an AOL account, adding AOLTV service lets your computer and television get online simultaneously - but brings your monthly charges to a steep $37. The setup takes about three hours if you`re technically adept. Part of the problem is that after interviewing you on screen about your cable box, ZIP code and so on, the box dials a local number, updates itself with new software, restarts and then forgets everything you`ve typed. You have to answer all the questions again. At least it`s good practice learning to type on the awkward wireless keyboard, which resembles a prop from "Honey, I Shrunk the Computer." To begin your Internet and channel surfing, you can begin with the AOLTV program guide, a scrolling TV listings grid that shows what`s on, now and for the next three days. By pressing arrow keys to move the cursor and pressing the Enter key to click, you can use the grid to change your television`s channel, set up a reminder - "Show`s about to start!` - that will pop up at the appropriate time, or even program your VCR to tape a show. Unfortunately, the AOLTV box isn`t smart enough to detect which channels you actually receive, so you wind up having to scroll through dozens of premium channels you may not get. Apparently, nobody at AOL realized that a program grid that lists shows you can`t actually watch is a recipe for frustration. (To the contrary, Carlos Silva, vice president of AOLTV, sees it as a marketing opportunity for AOL`s partners to "upsell" you to more expensive cable or satellite packages.) The Menu key summons a list of AOL`s more familiar offerings, like Chat, Buddy List, Instant Messaging, Mail and You`ve Got Pictures. Using these features makes the AOLTV`s modem dial, tying up a phone line just as though you`re using AOL on a PC. (Cable modems and D.S.L. connections don`t work with AOLTV.) The most popular features, like Chat and Mail, make the television picture shrink to one-fifth of its usual size, cowering in the upper-right corner of the screen. An AOL ad occupies an equivalent space to its left (which makes some television advertisers livid - they`re paying for the air time, but America Online freeloads with ads of its own). What`s left for your e-mail is the lower-right quadrant of the screen. You feel as though you`re reading it through the wrong end of a telescope, not that AOLTV e-mail is anything to write home about. Despite the fact that the AOLTV box contains a hard drive, you can`t receive pictures or other attachments (or even read the e-mail notes to which they`re attached). Worst of all, there`s no address book. AOL evidently assumes that its customers have photographic memories for Internet e- mail addresses. A Go To key lets you type any Web page address, but as AOLTV`s own help screen understates it, "Many Web pages will not look good and may be difficult to use on your television." Furthermore, when you`re viewing Web pages, the TV picture disappears. So much for the benefits of TV-Internet convergence, like being able to read a more detailed account of a television news story you`re watching. The juiciest feature ought to be the chat function. When you press the Chat key, you`re conveniently deposited in a chat room named for the show you`re watching. You`re all set to begin discussing the show with the rest of the AOL universe. The rude truth dawns only after a moment or two of staring at the blank screen and lamely typing, "Hello?" a couple of times: You`re all alone. In two weeks of trying, I never found a single other soul in an AOLTV chat room. It`s the mother of all chicken-and-egg syndromes: At the moment, there aren`t enough AOLTV members to make this feature work, but without it, few people will buy AOLTV boxes. Of course, you can always visit one of AOL`s regular, non-TV-related chat rooms, and there`s no denying the novelty of watching the usual teenage banter ("any girls here?" . . . "Instant-message me!!!!") scrolling up your TV screen. If these chat rooms are your cup of tea, you`re in luck, because you`ll find it very difficult to escape them. The two usual exits - the Menu key and the Go To key - don`t function in populated chat rooms. The chat box even swallows your attempts to change the channel. Any number keys you punch on the remote control wind up being typed into the chat room instead of changing the channel. (The other chatters must have thought I was some kind of loony as I tried repeatedly to change the channel. The only thing they saw me say for five minutes was 83 . . . 83 . . . 83.") As it turns out, the only reliable way to escape from a chat room is to use the on-screen Exit Chat button, which you can reach with three keystrokes. (An "Are you sure?" confirmation box often appears at this point. Unfortunately, there`s no key labeled "No, I clicked `Exit Chat` just to exercise my index finger.") AOLTV is a cornerstone of an initiative the company calls AOL Anywhere, a family of products that bring AOL to pagers, Palm devices and so on. But AOLTV could have been more than a simple window onto America Online; in so many ways, it could have capitalized on the potential of melding the on-screen and online worlds. For example, the movies listed in the TV guide could be hooked up to the Internet Movie Database (www.imdb.com), which provides cast lists, reviews, plot summaries and the like. Similarly, the parental controls that shield young eyes from mature material on AOL itself could also apply to television shows. And instead of creating new, utterly empty chat rooms for popular shows, the Chat button could be hooked up to the existing, crowded AOL chat rooms for football, "The X-Files" and so on. Mr. Silva at AOL said that improvements were on the way, including the option of adding pictures to e- mail, an address book and direct links to more populous chat rooms. That`s fortunate because some genuinely good ideas sleep behind the exorbitant pricing, the poorly conceived software design and the relentless marketing. But for the moment, this particular branch of AOL Anywhere might be better called AOL Nowhere. |
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| aus der Diskussion: | PRIMACOM THREAD 94 |
| Autor (Datum des Eintrages): | Krisenmanager (01.07.01 20:06:16) |
| Beitrag: | 82 von 247 (ID:3857216) |
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