There are multiple mass communication media in existence today. Print is the oldest and has been in existence since the fifteenth century. Other mass communication media include recordings, cinema, radio (all introduced between 1900-1920), television (introduced around 1950) and the Internet and mobile communication (introduced around 1990).

The different media forms have relative strengths and weaknesses. While print is portable and lends itself to annotation, it is a low bandwidth medium. The Internet provides higher bandwidth and interactivity but requires a display and network connectivity. Mobile phones have inbuilt payment mechanisms, are portable and offer connectivity by default but have limited displays. Newer mass media forms have often combined the best qualities of the earlier ones. Television combined the picture element of cinema and the advertising model from newspapers and magazines. Tomi Ahonen’s October 2005 post has a nice discussion on the evolution of different mass media.

Before the advent of the Internet, each media form had a distinct delivery mechanism. Print, cinema and recordings required physical channels for delivery on a mass scale. Television required a broadcast channel and the mobile phone required a radio spectrum. The Internet has allowed the delivery of multiple media forms over the same pipe. In addition to documents, it has become feasible to deliver video and radio over the Internet. In some countries, cinema is also being delivered over the Internet using BitTorrent like P2P technologies.

However, enabling information consumption in countries with low Internet penetration is a challenge. This is the case with India where television is the mass medium with the highest penetration (600 million Indians have access to TV as opposed to 37 million having access to the Internet). Internet penetration is growing at a decent clip, however it will take some time before everyone who has access to a TV has access to a PC.

At HP Labs India, we have developed a system that delivers printable documents over television broadcast (on both satellite as well as IPTV channels). Television has a broad geographic reach and delivers the “last mile” link virtually everywhere. Also, the incremental cost of delivering data through television to an additional reception point is zero. Trials of the technology in an educational setting have shown that print complements television nicely by improving the retention of information broadcast on television.