Would cable companies and telcos doing their race-walk towards digital transmission of programming and information software please clear the path: a sprinter is planning to pass you by.

The pacesetter is called the Intercast medium, it’s being developed by Intel Corporation’s Intercast Industry Group, and it promises to take the first step in ‘the convergence of the analog language of tv and the digital language of the pc.’

We’ve grown accustomed to hearing cablecasters and telecommunications monoliths battle for the hearts and minds of federal regulators and public policymakers over which should first gain digital access to our homes.

But while these signal transmitters plan and test, Intel expects to be broadcasting the Internet nationally in the u.s. later this year.

According to Mariah Scott, director of iig and a speaker at last month’s Communication – The New Media conference in Toronto, ‘working prototype’ system trials were underway in Portland, Ore. In October of last year, a Portland nbc affiliate succeeded in transmitting broadcast video and Web pages to an ‘Intercast-enabled pc’ in anticipation of nationwide tests, which were also set to begin in February. Scott predicts Intercast will be available in Canadian homes in the first quarter of 1997.

Now, exactly what is it?

Plainly speaking, the Intercast medium is non-proprietary technology for broadcasting the Internet to pcs equipped to receive specially developed programming content. The broadcast itself is compatible with any future or existing receptors, including over-the-air antennae or rabbit ears (!), cable or satellite. If, as some theories go, people are watching less tv in favor of more time online, then Intercast offers content providers and advertisers an opportunity to tap into that trend.

According to Scott, Intercast content ‘is created using mtml, the language of the World Wide Web. This means the new interactive content broadcast with the television signal appears to the user as Web pages, exactly as if he or she were using the actual World Wide Web. The broadcast Web pages can also include embedded hyperlinks to related information on the actual Internet. Using a telephone modem and any direct Internet connection, pcs with Intercast technology can use the hyperlinks to move transparently between television and Internet sites related to the television program.’

Users would see a specially developed tv show on one part of the screen and could interact with the associated Web pages on another part, accessing text, graphics or video about the program which pops up as the program progresses.

According to Intel’s Web site, you could access in-depth information about a current news story, continuous statistics for a sports program in progress or concert schedules for an artist appearing in a video.

In technical terms, Intercast is a ‘series of protocols and data formats that allows the transmission of data along with a television broadcast, and reception of data by pcs equipped to do so.’ It functions on the vertical blank interval of the tv screen.

Scott says she expects pc manufacturers, including Packard Bell and Gateway 2000, will be manufacturing platforms with Intercast capability later this year. The technology itself will be made available to all pc manufacturers. Intel’s Web site says the technology would work on Macs, but Mac babies will have to ask Apple directly whether it plans to build Intercast into its computers.

It certainly is not the only new technology being tested to link people, tvs and computers, but it is backed by Intel and the high-profile members of iig, including America Online, Comcast, nbc, Netscape Communications, Packard Bell, CNN Interactive, qvc, Viacom and WGBH Educational Foundation.

Intel maintains there is nothing else exactly like it, although it recognizes there are some products which broadcast data to ‘Web terminals’ or ‘Web tv,’ both because Intercast allows the user to store Web pages and control ‘the interactive experience’ – rather than having it controlled by a video server – and because the digital capability of high-performance computers allows graphics quality not possible on conventional tv sets.

While Scott did not offer any data on the proliferation of home computers in Canadian homes, she did note that more than 80% of u.s. households with incomes above $35,000 already have home computers.

And, while other panelists at this conference – and many others before and, undoubtedly since – argue that no new types of tv services can seriously challenge the dominance of over-the-air broadcasters, the proponents of Intercast would beg to differ. Scott says Internet users were expected to number 100 million by the end of 1995, compared with some 30 million only the year before. She reckons that the best way for broadcasters to make their bravado ring true is to get with the online program.

susan tolusso is senior communications manager for the National Film Board, which is also going interactive via its Multi-media programming strand.