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Web via VBI

The technology making all this possible employs a TV tuner card, inserted in your PC, and software to decode Web pages transmitted over an unused portion of the TV signal known as the vertical blanking interval (VBI). WavePhore of Phoenix, Arizona, first developed the technology three years ago, and Intel's free Intercast service has been using it since 1996 to deliver Web content related to shows on such major cable services as CNN, QVC, and MTV.

Now WavePhore is introducing its own free software and service, WaveTop, that works with Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0 to deliver Web pages from selected major sites, at least 17 hours a day, with updates as often as every 15 minutes. They're stored on your hard drive, so there's no wait to see the front page of USA Today or the latest box scores on CBS SportsLine. The software requires a Pentium-90 or better (P-133 recommended) PC with 16MB of RAM, at least 100MB of disk space, and Windows 95.

WaveTop is about to become ubiquitous: Microsoft, hedging its bets on the future of PC/TV convergence, plans to incorporate WaveTop software into Windows 98's WebTV for Windows, a feature of the forthcoming operating system that uses a TV tuner card to receive Web-based programming delivered via TV signals.