Two-way communications between the TV viewer and service providers. Although various experiments took place in the 1980s, interactive TV never took off as expected. The closest thing to it is the ability to play, stop and rewind movies from the video-on-demand (VOD) offerings on cable TV, FiOS and the streaming providers. However, with the advent of Google TV (superseded by Android TV), which includes the Chrome Web browser, as well as smart TVs that have a browser, users can be couch potatoes and interact with the Web all day long. See
Google TV,
Android TV,
smart TV,
Internet TV,
video-on-demand and
digital convergence.