A friend just got the new Pearl Jam album. It kicks ass when you hear it in his room. But when you slip the disc into your CD player, you get nothing but static. You try your dad's system — still nothing. Maybe your portable Discman? How about your sister's boom box ... ?

The battle to establish a standard interactive-CD format is shaping up to be one of the messiest in entertainment history. Currently, if you want to buy Dragon's Lair for your brother, you must know if he needs the PC CD-ROM, Mac CD-ROM, CD-i, 3DO, or Sega CD version of the game. And it's only going to get worse, as at least three new formats will be introduced this year. This is a consumer's nightmare: Beta versus VHS redux. About the only thing clear is that many people are not likely to commit to interactive entertainment until this issue is resolved. As my father likes to say, "Once bitten ... " (He bought Beta.)

What's on the tube tonight? Click. After two minutes, NBC appears on screen. Damn, a Blossom rerun. You try PBS. Another few minutes. Oh, no, Three Tenors. Maybe ABC. Several minutes later, a message pops up: ''Unable to contact host.'' Sigh. You need a faster TV ...

Anyone who has tried surfing the Net or the Web knows that surfing is the wrong word. Try paddleboating. Sure, the Internet is interactive, compelling, and deep. But it's also slow. Even with high-powered equipment and dedicated phone lines, getting wired requires buckets of patience. And though everyone from the FCC to the phone companies has been babbling about "increasing the bandwidth" to accommodate the flood of information headed to our homes, it will be years before we'll be able to zap through the Net with the speed of a TV remote. Until then, just keep waiting.

Originally posted May 05, 1995 Published in issue #273 May 05, 1995 Order article reprints
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