An arcane piece of European legislation which required that all IDTVs include something called a common interface (CI) is likely to have a pay-off after all. While some manufacturers have been complaining that it is unfair (and expensive) to require these slots to be included in IDTVs but not in set-top boxes, the projected launch of a clutch of paid-for channels on the UK's digital terrestrial television (DTT) platform should now have them singing a different tune. For the CI slot, in essence, makes all IDTVs upgradeable to pay-TV - because something called a conditional access module or CAM can be plugged into them.
The old ITV Digital boxes, of which there are estimated to be somewhere between 400,000 and 800,000 still active, were designed to unscramble pay-TV channels, and have the required technology built into them. But the vast majority of Freeview boxes don't, because they don't incorporate the necessary CI slot. The exceptions are the Nokia Mediamaster 221T and the Netgem i-Player. Some early Pace boxes - such as the DTVA - are also in principle upgradeable to pay-TV because they have a smartcard slot embedded in the base, but Pace would need to invest some money in a software upgrade for that to work.
Which leaves the estimated 500,000 IDTVs out there sitting pretty. By the end of this year, if manufacturers' predictions are accurate, there should be 1 million of them in UK TV homes - and all of them represent potential pay-TV customers for Top-Up TV, the new pay-TV offer designed to be launched alongside the free-to-air Freeview channels sometime later this year. Since most IDTVs also incorporate the right connectors to attach modems to, they are beginning to emerge as one of the few future-proof DTT receivers around, since they will be able also to offer true, two-way interactivity, unlike most Freeview set-top boxes. Let's hope IDTV manufacturers make the most of that selling-point during the course of 2004.
