It also includes high-speed Internet access. Video on demand is scheduled for the near future. TV Cabo, a unit of Internet and cable TV company PT Multimedia, will be the first cable network in the world to have the Microsoft digital product available on a broadband, or high-speed digital, system. TV Cabo has about a million subscribers and Microsoft holds a 1.87 percent stake in PT Multimedia. If they can't be, they are going to have to fold up their tents and move away from the television market.
Analysts forecast explosive growth in the nascent interactive TV market.
Fifteen million European households have the service and a million in the United States, according to David Mercer, an analyst with Strategy Analytics, a London research consultancy. Microsoft has invested widely in U.S. and European cable TV systems. Microsoft's competitors have charged that Microsoft is trying to buy its way into the interactive TV software market, while Microsoft says it wants to help develop broadband. The software used by TV Cabo was set to debut on UPC last year, but Microsoft could not deliver it in time. It later will use gear from Britain's Pace Micro Technology Plc.