page Eight
THE SUMMER DAILY
Wednesdoy, June 6, 1973
K.C. suburb trying out
futuristic tv system
By PATRICK A. MALONE
OVERLAND PARK, Kan. (UPI)
- Flick on your television set and
watch a rotating display of sport-
ing goods. Punch a button and
you've just bought a new set
of golf clubs.
Turn the channel and talk to
yottr doctor. Show him where it
hurts; let him take your tem-
perature and pulse via remote
sensors.
system lets you talk back to your
TV, and your TV listens. Special
amplifiers, which boost the cost
of a two-way system 55 per cent,
enable the double strand cable
to carry 12 channels out on each
strand and three back in. This
means that each TV can re-
ceive 24 channels and, with
broadcasting equipment, send on
six other channels.
"We're on the threshhold of a
"We're on the threshold of a real revolution
in communications, perhaps even changing
the structure of a community.'
-Murray Nolte
Telecable manager
IT'S TIME for the community
college's great books discussion.
Tune it in and you're arguing
with readers in a dozen other
homes.
If you think none of this will
really happen for at least 10 or
20 years, you're wrong. It's just
around the corner in suburban
Kansas City.
What has made this futuristic
two-way television system more
than science fiction is a 600-mile
system of coaxial cable laid by
Telecable of Overland Park, Inc.,
throughout nineKansas C i t y
suburbs in northeast Jhson
County, Kan.
JUST AS in ordinary cable TV,
the cable carries signals from
the Telecable studios to any
household willing to pay $5 a
month to triple the number of
channels received. Some of the
channels transmitted are out-of-
town stations snared by Tele-
cable's big antenna; others are
special service channels o n 1 y
available via cable, such as 24-
hour news and stock market re-
ports.
Unlike ordinary cable TV thiso
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Music by:
THE BIRDS and STEPPENWOLF
THURSDAY & FRIDAY
(6-7) (6-8)
7:45 & 10:00 P.M.
Modern Languages Bldg.
"JE 1Y b aC,9P
real revolution in communica-
tions, perhaps even changing the
structure of a community," Tele-
cable Manager Murray Nolte said
in an interview.
TWO HURDLES block the goal
of two-way cable communications.
One is developing commercially
feasible broadcast equipment for
the home. The other is of the
chicken-egg variety. Both prob-
lems, Nolte predicts, will be at
least partly solved within a year.
Nolte likens his chicken-egg
problem to that of broadcasters
in the early days of color tele-
vision: Which comes first, the
programming or the equipment?
There would be little point in
buying a color TV if all broad-
casts were in black and white.
But if no one had color TV, why
go to the expense of broadcast-
ing in color?
SIMILARLY, Nolte explained,
there is little point in paying a
hefty sum to have a little box
with an adding machine-like key-
board installed in your living'
room if it just sits there. But if
you could punch a button on the
box and buy golf clubs or the
week's groceries, you might go
for it.
While electronic engineers work
on the cost factor and marketing
specialists tinker with the chick-
en and the egg, Telecable is go-
ing ahead with plans for some
non-profit two-way applications.
"We're sitting here with WO
miles of cable, every inch 'ti'n
two-way capability, the only ma-
jor system like this in the coun-
try," Nolte said. "So we're vsv
anxious to prove it's economictl-
it viable."
HE LISTED some of the: ies
being planned and others just
talked about. ^
The company is planning tele-
vised discussion groups among
several remote locations. T he
Johnson County Community Cal-
lege would set the topic and a
discussion leader, and partici-
pants in the regular affair would
gather at one of about a dozen
homes equipped with cameras
and other broadcasting gear.
A program for teaching handi-
capped students who cannot leave
home was tried once experiment-
ally and should be started again
in the fall. The teacher, who oth-
erwise would travel from home
to home for one-on-one tutoring,
would sit in a studio; she could
give personal lessons to a half
dozen students simultaneonsly by
fliping the channel from student
to student.
THE SHOPPING SERVICES
will become available when it
becomes feasible to Install the
boxes with adding machine key-
boards in more than a few horn-
es.
Those little boxes will feed in-
to a computer that will make pos-
sible a wide array of services,
from instant voting and banking
at home to calling up on the
screen something from a mem-
ory bank, such as tonight's TV
listings.
Doctors at the University of
Kansas Medical Center have ex-
pressed serious interest in med-
ical services via two-way tele-
vision, Nolte said. One program
would offer house calls of a sort
by sending teams of paramedics
to homes of bedridden patients.
Sensors would then be attached
to a camera set in front of the
patient, whom the doctor could
then "see" without leaving his
office. Another program would
connect a pediatrician to school
nurses for consultations.
A QuiCK cflat
Governor Winfield Dunn of Tennessee takes time out from the
National Governors' Conference for a brief telephone chat in the
lobby of the Saraha Tahoe Hotel in Stateline, Nev. The governors'
meeting began Monday and ends today.
WAR MEMORIAL:
Israeli police halt
Arab shop strike
JERUSALEM () - Arab shops closed briefly yesterday to observe
the sixth anniversary of the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, but they reopened
as soon as police began marking striking shops with black paint.
Arabs in the Israeli police force, escorted by Israeli infantrymen,
moved down main shopping streets painting black circles and crosses
on the shutters of closed shops and writing down names of the shop-
keepers.
POLICE HELD 10 shopkeepers until they agreed to reopen.
Almost all the merchants who went on strike yesterday morning
were doing business again by noon.
Police Chief Joel Barelli said the end of the merchants strike was
"another failure" for Arab guerrillas.
CEREMONIES also were held elsewhere in occupied Jordan to
mark the anniversary.
Armed troops patrolled east Jerusalem streets in trios, but the
Holy City and the occupied zones of Jordan and Gaza were quiet.
Only minor incidents were reported.
Grieving relatives gathered at cemeteries to mourn Jordanian
troops killed in the six-day war and ceremonies were held in Arab
town halls. Some town councils declared a half holiday, to mark
the Arab defeat and to protest the Israeli occupation.
ASIDE FROM the pressure on shopkeepers, the Israelis made no
visible attempt to halt the demonstrations.
One Arab merchant told Israel's state radio "it is my democratic
right to close my shop and Israel is a democratic country." But like
the others he reopened for business.
Peter O'Toole, Sophia Loren and James Coco in
The Greatest Romantic Musical Adventure of All Time!
* STARTING FRIDAY *
603 E. LIBERTY " DIAL 665-6290
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