Jack-on-the-Box

The Set Top Unit, March 1995

It seems we spend a lot of time and effort to get hold of the next piece of gadgetry that comes off the production line. We lead the world in our acceptance and use of new technology products with our take-up of television, VCR's and computers, marking us out as people with time on their hands. Nearly every home has television, 80% have VCR's and over 25% homes - and rising - have computers. Add in hi-fi's, CD players, video game units, camcorders and the rest and it's beginning to look a bit cluttered in your living room. Just look at the four or five remote controls on your table!

Now there's a new box of tricks for us to get our hands - or remote controls - on: the Set Top Unit or STU. These boxes, slightly smaller than a VCR, are part of the pay television system and decode the scrambled or encrypted television signal received by your dish or brought in by a cable connection. Every subscriber to a pay service receives an STU and a remote control, and, provided they keep up their subscription, they can receive the service. Stop paying, and you end up with a blank screen.

Unfortunately for the viewer, the signal isn't the only thing that's scrambled. At present, each different "brand" of box is suitable only for that particular kind of service. Galaxy's microwave-delivered service, the forthcoming satellite services and the several kinds of proposed cable television systems will each need their own, unique box.

This is a problem because the STU is primarily a "gateway" to the new services on offer. It's the key to much of what we can expect from new technology in the future, first from pay television channels, and later, from interactive and on-demand television and computer-based services. Soon these boxes will incorporate connections to CD ROM players, modems and computers to increase what you can do with your television and, with each new addition, that gateway assumes more importance to us.

The STU, and whoever holds the key to it, also controls whether you're connected or not. And, if you make programs or services or you've got something to sell on these networks, you also have to go through whatever companies own and operate these STU's. It's the gateway or access point to products, information, markets and - if you add in telecommunications - to telephones and computer-based communications like the internet and on-line services. With common gateways everyone can be involved - when they're proprietry, like America On Line or the Microsoft Network (presently called On Australia here) - then you pay each time you pass through the gate, and could find your access to the rest of the world via the open system of the internet, to be restricted.

For pay television and other new broadband services to be a success, someone is going to have to sort out the tangle of wires and boxes. Common standards - like VHS tape, broadcast television and the language computers use to communicate on the internet - made these products cheap and easy to use and are the real reason they are a popular success. Let's all hope someone takes notice or, like the thousands of obsolete Beta videos and machines, some of us could be left with a lot of useless toys.


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