Digital technology and data compression will soon provide subscribers
to cable TV with possibly hundreds of different channels. A recent patent
application (WO 92/11713) from GTE in the US suggests using this capacity
to deliver the same programmes on several channels, but with staggered starting
times. It calls this 鈥榲ideo programming nearly on demand鈥�.
GTE will transfer movies to optical video discs and run the discs on
players which have several read-out heads, each reading data off a different
area of the disc. So one player can deliver several versions of the same
movie, staggered at 15 or 20-minute intervals.
Viewers will be able to see which movie is playing, and know that it
will start again from the beginning in a few minutes. They will pay to see
the movie by pressing a button on a box, or by telephone. Although the
movie is scrambled and can be watched in its entirety only after payment,
a timer in the control box lets viewers see a few minutes without scrambling.
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