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The FSN system, built in collaboration with Silicon Graphics, AT&T, Scientific-Atlanta and a long list of subcontractors, is almost dizzyingly complex. Huge racks of computer disk drives called file servers store movies and other "video assets" in digital form. Giant switches called ATMS shuttle prodigious quantities of data at blistering speeds. A set-top box with five times the computing power of a top-of-the-line IBM PC downloads images from the server at the rate of 30 pictures a second. Press a button on the remote, and the signal travels through cable-TV lines, fiber-optic wires, switches and servers on the other side of town in less time than it takes for a conventional remote control to change the channel on a TV set across a living room.
In hands-on tests, the system rarely tests your patience. Click on a selection, and the network responds almost immediately. It feels "alive" -- almost too much so. Whatever category you select starts promoting itself immediately, pitching a product or showing a movie trailer. But if you don't like what you see, you can always move on. Hitting the "carousel" button, for example, takes you back to the main menu. There's also a handy "skip forward 10 minutes" button, which turned out to be perfect for finding Elle MacPherson's nude scenes in Sirens -- without having to sit through the movie.
It looked good -- if you discount the "boggle" factor. This is a psychological effect Stewart Brand describes in The Media Lab, his 1987 book about M.I.T.'s cutting-edge research facility. It's a sensation familiar to anyone who has spent a day at a high-tech trade show or an hour with a fast- talking computer salesman. Too much happens too fast. There is too much hand waving, too many new things with new names. "The potential for being bamboozled," writes Brand, "is total."
In the mind-boggling hoopla last week, it was easy to forget that much of the system being demonstrated was still under construction, including the all- important network operating system that is supposed to field, smoothly and transparently, simultaneous requests from the remote controls of thousands -- and eventually millions -- of customers, even when large numbers of them are trying to watch the same hit movie at slightly different times.
The boggle factor was most intense in Time Warner's Future Services exhibit, where more than a dozen potential services were on display -- from sports on demand to an instant medical-checkup service. In one such service, rock musician Todd Rundgren showed off his interactive music system, which allows customers to select listening choices by artist, style, tempo or mood. In another, ShopperVision demonstrated its "virtual" supermarket, where customers can browse 3-D aisles, choose among 20,000 kinds of packaged goods and order for same-day delivery.