The mirror-reflections on inhabited TV

Abstract

Inhabited TV is a vision of future television services in which multi-user virtual environments deliver unprecedented levels of audience participation. Social chat and interaction are mixed with professional content and programming to create on-line communities. The Mirror was a ground-breaking collaborative experiment in Inhabited TV created by BT, Sony Illuminations and the BBC. Six on-line worlds were available to over 2000 viewers of the BBC2 series "The Net" in January and February 1997, and this paper provides an overview of the project.