Introduction to Broadcast Architecture

[This is preliminary documentation and subject to change.]

The design of Broadcast Architecture enables personal computers to receive video and digital data from virtually any broadcast source, including existing satellite, cable, and terrestrial television networks. Effective with the Microsoft® Windows® 98 operating system, every copy of Windows shipped includes extensions that support Broadcast Architecture. Any computer running these extensions, and equipped with enabling hardware, can receive interactive entertainment and information delivered through high-speed, nationwide broadcast channels.

Broadcast Architecture offers an evolutionary step in the progress of computers and television. By using Broadcast Architecture, you can build upon your existing content and technologies, while creating added value by combining them in new ways. At the same time, Broadcast Architecture suggests new avenues for the distribution of home entertainment, news, information, education, software, and general retail merchandise.

The following sections introduce the concepts, goals, and implications of Broadcast Architecture:

• Concept: Computers Receive Broadcasts. In a nutshell, Broadcast Architecture allows personal computers to receive broadcasts transmitted over any kind of network.
• The Broadcast Push Model. Why broadcasting is an efficient way to deliver large amounts of information.
• Computer Power. As a receiver of television, radio, and data broadcasts, a personal computer has many advantages over older technologies.
• New Kinds of Television. The combination of television and computers creates a new medium that not only provides information and entertainment for users, but also offers many new opportunities for advertisers, broadcasters, network operators, all types of publishers, and hardware and software manufacturers.
• New Kinds of Data. New types of content can be designed and created specifically for broadcast clients. At the same time, broadcast client viewers can watch standard television with top-of-the-line picture quality and sound.