Unlike the grandiose dreams of the past, interactive services currently available in the United States seem rather modest. They include video on demand, expanded content for channels like ESPN and the Weather Channel, and virtual channels to provide local information like restaurant listings or sell books, pizza and other products.
What American viewers are unlikely to see anytime soon is two-way interactivity with programs through the television set, a longtime ambition of broadcasters and advertisers. Hybrid Internet-television services like AOLTV and MSN TV have experimented with interactive programming, but with fewer than one million users, they have not held much appeal for broadcasters. In two-way interactivity, the United States is far behind Britain, the country where interactive television is perhaps most advanced.
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