Polsat to offer computerless Net
Polsat, the country's largest private national TV station, celebrated its eighth anniversary last week. To mark the occasion, Polsat's managers announced that the station would propel its viewers into the 21st century by introducing a digital decoder that will allow them to surf the Internet without a computer.
While broadcasters all over the world consider the decoder a serious technological challenge and are still testing it themselves, Dominik Libicki, the coordinator of Polsat's digital platform development, said the device would likely be introduced on the Polish market as early as this month. The decoder, along with a special keyboard and remote control unit, will be manufactured by France-based Sagem.
According to Libicki, the decoder could make Polsat's digital platform, which so far has developed in the shadow of two other platforms, Wizja TV and Cyfra+, a pioneer on the market. "We are definitely first on the market," he said. "Our competition does offer access to the Internet but only to those who have computers. Our product is addressed to subscribers who can't afford a computer." Libicki said that Polsat's decoder will not be able to download documents from the net, but it will offer unlimited surfing capacity. Potential subscribers will have to pay a zl. 300 deposit for the new decoder and zl. 399 to activate it.
Polsat's competitors, meanwhile, remained calm if not rather skeptical. "I won't comment on Polsat's (decoder) because it seems unrealistic from a business point of view," said Jakub Brzeczkowski, deputy director general of Canal+ Polska. Canal+ Polska runs Cyfra+, one of Poland's top two digital platforms. "I agree that technologically it is possible to access the Internet via satellite without a computer, but this requires a completely different generation of decoders."
Such decoders would have to operate like mini computers with internal hard drives. And they will be expensive, Brzeczkowski said. "They might cost as much as zl. 1,500-zl. 2,000," he said. "That's why if we introduce them on the market, we will be selling them." Now, all three digital platforms subsidize the cost of decoders, which are given to subscribers in exchange for a deposit.
Marek Sowa, vice president for corporate affairs at United Pan-Europe Communications' (UPC) Polish operations, was also cautious about Polsat's decoder. "I will be skeptical until I see it working," he said. "You can write down a Web address, but what you finally get on a TV screen is a completely different story. Television is not a good terminal for computer operations."
According to Brzeczkowski, Web pages would have to be formatted in a different way before they can be legible on a TV screen. "I'm not sure if what Polsat presents as so easy is really that easy," UPC's Sowa said. "Today, the PC is the best terminal. That's why we want to provide this service in the first place." UPC has announced plans to provide Internet access via satellite for subscribers with computers (see Medialog, page 5).
Canal+, which in the spring is looking to launch a "Web-casting service" that would provide selected Web pages adapted to a TV screen, is also working on its own decoder, Brzeczkowski said. "The new standard, G2 ... I expect it will be tested (in Poland) next year," he said.
