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B
ack in the early 1990s, tech
was all about multimedia; the
convergence of computers and
entertainment. CD-ROM, the hybrid format
that allowed programs and video to be
delivered on audio discs, brought moving
pictures to PC and Macintosh screens in an
exciting new genre of software bridging the
gap between games and films. But the big
money was still in television, and Apple
CEO John Sculley wanted a piece of it.
The ingredients of a digital TV service
would be a network supplying interactive
content, and hardware to receive it. Apple
already had hardware, and the Power
Macintosh Quadra 605 (the ‘pizza box Mac’)
was quickly dressed up as a set-top device. You
can still read its manual in Apple’s official user
document archive (bit.ly/mf346intertvbox).
Using the supplied remote control, users
would select, play and pause programmes
from an ‘interactive video service’.Apple’s first partner to provide such
a feed would be British Telecom (BT), the
company formed a decade earlier by the
privatisation of the country’s telephone service.
The Interactive Multimedia Service, described
by BT as the world’s first truly interactive
video-on-demand trial, was tested in 1994
across 2,500 households in English suburbia.
A contemporary promotional video
(bit.ly/mf346btintertv) shows the Interactive
Television Box accessing not only a range of
TV shows, but also Nintendo video games,
implying a partnership of which few other
records exist. Trials also began in the US
in 1995, and legend has it that as many as a
thousand boxes were installed in Disneyland
hotel rooms. But the technology was too
immature for standards to be established,
and neither this nor any other multimedia
broadcast platform caught on. It would be
a different revolution – the rise of the internet- that eventually changed TV forever.
Apple Interactive
Television Box
106 | MACFORMAT | DECEMBER 2019
RANDOM APPLE MEMORY
Apple’s continuing quest to ‘fix TV’ began more
than 20 years ago, remembers Adam Banks
It’s not a million miles
away from a standard
cable box...Image credit©Jonathan Zufi, iconicbook.comNEXT ISSUE ON SALE
17 DEC