Scientific Atlanta and General Instrument have shipped something on the order of 17 million advanced cable boxes.
Some DirecTV receivers are also interactive-ready.
Microsoft and Liberate are in the set-top box business, too, along with others. Microsoft's WebTV is already bringing interactive TV into a handful of homes, where viewers presumably haven't found the experience so incredible they convinced all their neighbors to buy a WebTV for themselves. Microsoft's next-generation box, the UltimateTV, should be in stores this spring, although the company continues its development of other interactive TV devices as well. It may be fun, it may add value, but it won't do too much to distract us from the program on the rest of the screen. Interactive TV will not just send people to the Internet, at least not during the program itself.