News and Updates

July 14, 2000, Friday

WPT ON THE CUTTING EDGE

Tom Alesia
© Wisconsin State Journal

Tina Hauser typed ''Lambeau'' on a unique search engine and nearly a dozen tiny video clips appeared on her computer screen.

Hauser, a producer for Wisconsin Public Television's (WPT) Digital Innovations unit, chose one. It was a clip from WPT's public-affairs show ''WeekEnd'' with a Brown County official discussing the Lambeau Field renovation proposal.

The picture was sharp. The sound was clear.

The future was evident.

It's called Video Asset Management, and it was, perhaps, the most striking technology displayed to public television broadcasters and educators at a conference Wednesday in Madison.

Byron Knight, WPT's interim director of broadcasting and media innovations, described Video Asset Management as doing for video what search engines do now for the written word.

That's heady stuff -- and it's going to be several years before it's used in homes. But WPT is one of the first broadcasters testing it and, given its infancy, Knight said, ''we're still learning to use it.''

A few for-profit companies have jumped into the field of coding TV programs. It's done largely by using the show's closed-captioned text.

WPT has stored seven ''WeekEnd'' hour-long programs on Video Asset Management.

It's part of WPT's grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting's Future Fund, Knight said, ''to fund innovative approaches to new technologies.''

The close relationship between WPT and UW-Madison allows WPT to use Internet 2 (or I-2), the next generation of high-speed Internet now available only to research universities, for Video Asset Management.

As a result, the 100 people at the conference were a mix of university and public TV representatives from across the country.

Steven Vedro, WPT's project manager, was a prominent part of this week's summer meeting of the Higher Education Telecommunications Consortium (HETC) at UW's Pyle Center. He explained that I-2 provides considerably
faster video transmission and less-used broadband capacity than the Internet.

''Eventually, the public will not watch TV as we know it. They'll go to video on demand,'' Vedro said.

''In the interim, one of the things we're looking at is how public television stations can share content with each other by putting the best of their local programs on shared servers. Then producers will be able to check for a clip of just about anything.''

Another notable feature at the conference was WPT's booth highlighting its use of WebTV. Although only about 200 sets in Wisconsin are equipped with it, WPT has used the Internet and TV program combination on ''WeekEnd'' and a gardening show.

WebTV allows the viewer to download data by clicking on options noted on the screen.

''Commercial TV, of course, is very interested in this,'' Vedro said. ''You could have a logo for Ford on the screen for a few seconds, then viewers could click on it and have, say, 20 minutes of information about the product.''

Vedro added how public TV broadcasters see the educational aspect of using the Internet on TV screens.

''For instance, if you're watching a Wisconsin gardening program, you could download plant information from your county's extension program.''

Given WebTV's minuscule reach now, is WPT spinning its wheels by spending so much time refining its work combining broadcast and Internet?

''For us,'' Vedro said, ''this is practice for the next generation of TVs that has the Internet built in.''