3Com, ZDTV to give away 10,000 'netcams'
The deal calls for 3Com during the next two years to distribute some 10,000 of its Bigpicture Video Kits, which consist of a camera, software, and other components needed to give a PC, or a TV, a video conferencing capability. The kits retail for anywhere from $200 to $450 each, meaning that 3Com is, in effect, ponying up the equivalent of at least $2 million.
ZDTV, the first 24-hour cable channel dedicated entirely to programming about computing and the Internet, is an arm of Ziff-Davis Inc., which also operates ZDNN. The channel is slated to debut early next year.
In announcing the deal Tuesday, ZDTV CEO Larry Wangberg described the undertaking as a "defining" feature that impacts cable TV, computing, and the Internet. "It's an enormous step in the convergence of the Internet and TV."
Experts echoed the claims. "Ten thousand cameras out there -- it's a big deal," said Joachim Blunck, a veteran television producer who created Fox' s FX cable network. "Handled correctly and inventively, they're breaking new ground."
But handling it correctly remains a daunting challenge. Generally speaking, live video over the Web is a formative technology, at best. Quality at lower modem speeds is poor, and a far cry from the signal that a television viewer is accustomed to receiving over the airwaves.
Nevertheless, Heidi Chair, a senior Internet analyst at Ryan Hankin Kent Inc., a telecom consulting firm in South San Francisco, Calif., reacted favorably to the prospects for the experiment.
"I haven't heard of anything like this," she said, noting that it breaks the mold for typical TV programming. "They're exploiting an exciting new arena; it's real-time interactive content over the Web."
The Bigpicture Video Kit is produced by 3Com's personal communications division -- formerly U.S. Robotics, which 3Com acquired last year. Along with the color camera, it includes the other enabling technologies -- a modem, a video-capture card, and software.
Wangberg also noted that 3Com's technology is "scalable" insofar as it will work with anything from a 28.8-bps modem all the way to an ultra-speedy cable modem. One kit, which retails for $449, contains a set-top box that will turn a TV into a videophone that works over a regular telephone line.
Rob Hudson, who manages the 3Com's Bigpicture product line, justified his company's large stake in the deal as a matter of market-building. "Yes, it's a lot of money," he said, "but the key thing is for videoconferencing to blow open, you have to build behaviors -- let people know that video is a real thing in their lives."
In a press release, ZDTV said the technology will be "distributed to everyone from cable TV operators and CEOs to soccer moms, from teen-agers to journalists, from industry analysts to opinion leaders."
Richard Fisher, ZDTV's executive vice president, said the cable channel's producers will turn to the "netcam network" for several aspects of their programming. They could place a netcam in the office of a highly placed computing executive -- a Bill Gates, say -- who would be encouraged to participate in news programming by the convenience of dialing in right from his desktop rather than having to travel to a TV studio.
Most importantly, though, everyday viewers could become active participants, he said, in programming that could range from a dating show to one created to help viewers use, fix, or otherwise cope with their PCs. In all these forms, the audience would be connected, live, to the television studio through the Internet.
ZDTV and 3Com are working out the details of how the kits will be handed out. 3Com's Hudson said some of the kits will be allocated to cable operators to pass along to whomever they please. Others will be given away as special promotions or contests.
Fisher said ZDTV was pioneering another iteration of interactive TV.
Indeed, the idea of interactivity has been something of a holy grail in television circles -- much desired but, so far, never achieved.
"In the great, grand scheme of things, to be able to have a viewer interact directly with the television is the ultimate one-on-one dialogue," producer Blunck said.