Don Dulchinos

SAN FRANCISCO–It wouldn’t be a gorgeous summer week in San Francisco if there wasn’t a TV of Tomorrow show, and it wouldn’t be Tracy Swedlow’s show if there weren’t nine people (not including her) on the closing panel.

Which it was, and which there were, and somehow it all worked. The session, simply titled “The “Tomorrowists,” had one purpose: To describe the future of television. (With flutes of champagne and strawberries. To loosen up.)

Here’s a sampling of the reverie, starting with the notion of “pause,” in storytelling. Maybe it becomes a place to “insert your own imagination,” said Ed Finn, founding director of the Center for Science & Imagination at Arizona State. “Pause is the future of TV as having a very different relationship with time – an asynchronous experience that’s still somehow live.”

Gone will be the known formats of half hour and one hour shows – “everything will blur,” noted Gary Lauder, managing partner of Lauder Partners. “It will be more like YouTube, where program duration doesn’t stay within any defined lines.”

Complete immersion is on the way, too. This year brought HD displays that bend (a little). TVs that roll up like scrolls made the rounds of “cool things coming” last year. Next, “television will float.  You’ll walk through it,” said Swedlow, who added: “Your TV will become your assistant, your friend, the thing that feeds you.”

A mainstay of TV of Tomorrow events are the interactive art exhibits, and this year didn’t disappoint. Artist Cory Barr, who brought a “magic sandbox” (super cool and not succinctly describable in words, but here’s a video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddXam191g4w ) and a “shatter wall” (likewise: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MaTv7WWwJr4 ), had this to say about the future of television: “The sensors in the sandbox and on the shatter wall are similar to what LG’s putting in TVs, and can be fed into learning algorithms.” That way, our TVs will select shows for  us based on our moods, which they’ll learn, “based on how we move.” (Yikes.)

Other great quips from TVOT:

“Everything will be a television. Five years from now, Arthur (Orduna, chief innovation officer for ADT) will have a shirt that’s a TV. But still the bow tie,” said Don Dulchinos, SVP/advanced services at CableLabs.

“TV will become aware of our psychoses,” predicted Audrey Balkind, chairman of Bernis Balkind, whom Swedlow described as “a real Mad Men guy, during the hayday of the ad business.”

“TV will be more immersive, more intelligent, more aware, and probably, to a lot of people, a lot more spooky,” said Cory Barr, artist.

“TV is going to be watching you as much as you watch it,” said Seth Haberman, CEO of Visible World.

Swedlow, who once welled up and proclaimed herself verklempt when discussing television inventor Philo Farnsworth, relied on his definition of the future of television: “An interactive adventure of discovery and imagination.”

Still, though, one thing won’t ever change, noted Lauder: “The software will still have bugs.”

This column originally appeared in the Platforms section of Multichannel News.

At the 2006 National Show, I interviewed CableLabs executives Mike Schwartz and Don Dulchinos about that year’s CableNet exhibit highlights. Hot tickets: OCAP-enabled boxes, OCAP apps (not just the guide, new stuff too!); Downloadable conditional access (remember DCAS?); ETV & ITV.

Video courtesy The Cable Channel.

Prior to the 2005 Consumer Electronics Show, I visited CableLabs to discuss the intersections between CE devices and cable services. In this second segment, VP of Advanced Platforms and Services Don Dulchinos discusses the need to work with more manufacturers; Jenifer Cistola talks about “Go2Broadband.”

Video courtesy The Cable Channel.

Interactive TV was the buzz, going into the 1999 Western Show. In the final segment of this panel, featuring Time Warner Cable’s Michael Adams, AT&T Broadband’s David Rudnick, and CableLabs’ Don Dulchinos, we discuss what consumers see on the first screen of interactive boxes (last channel, plus email, services, customer care). The resounding theme: TV-centric is the way.

Video courtesy The Cable Channel.

Interactive TV was the buzz going into the 1999 Western Show. In part 5 of this panel, featuring Time Warner Cable’s Michael Adams, AT&T Broadband’s David Rudnick, and CableLabs’ Don Dulchinos, we get into “what the heck is middleware, and how is it different from an operating system?” Also: Why downloadable software into set-tops isn’t scary.

Video courtesy The Cable Channel.

Interactive TV was the buzz going into the 1999 Western Show. In part 4 of this panel, featuring Time Warner Cable’s Michael Adams, AT&T Broadband’s David Rudnick, and CableLabs’ Don Dulchinos, we review what the consumer landscape will look like for TVs with built-in set-tops, after the July 2000 removable security deadline imposed on cable (but not satellite!) by the FCC.

Video courtesy The Cable Channel.

Interactive TV was the buz, going into the 1999 Western Show. In part 3 of this panel, featuring Time Warner Cable’s Michael Adams, AT&T Broadband’s David Rudnick, and CableLabs’ Don Dulchinos, we review what’s happening with OpenCable, separable security and PODs.

Video courtesy The Cable Channel.

Interactive TV was the buzz going into the 1999 Western Show. In part 2 of this panel, featuring Time Warner Cable’s Michael Adams, AT&T Broadband’s David Rudnick, and CableLabs’ Don Dulchinos, we discuss the state of deployments (we were on the cusp of the DCT-5000 at the time, LOL), apps (email, chat, a wallet), and the complexity of the Internet.

Video courtesy The Cable Channel.

Interactive TV was the buzz going into the 1999 Western Show. In part 1 of this panel, featuring Time Warner Cable’s Michael Adams, AT&T Broadband’s David Rudnick, and CableLabs’ Don Dulchinos, we discuss why ITV is back (again!), as well as infrastructure requirements, economic viability and oh yeah, that World Wide Web thing.

Video courtesy The Cable Channel.