When the first paying subscriber flips on his or her U-verse TV service from SBC Communications early next year, it's unlikely to look all that different from traditional cable TV. Perhaps the video signal may be a little clearer, maybe the set-top box will be cooler, but what's shown on the screen will look pretty much the same.

Give the service a couple of years, though, and viewers should see a whole lot more than just plain old cable service, the company insists. While not revealing any specific details, SBC and Microsoft have been offering hints about what may be in store for the viewing experience, circa 2010. At this year's International CES event, the companies showed a mosaic view where viewers could watch five different baseball games at the same time while simultaneously displaying statistics for fantasy games at the bottom of the screen. This sports geek's nirvana is still several years off, but it provides a clue as to which way IPTV can go.

Vendors often site another example of IPTV's potential: viewers able to navigate around a screen with a mouse-like device, picking and choosing different objects in a show (a shirt worn by an actor, for example) and immediately linking to a Web site where they can buy the object. It's impulse buying at its finest or worst, depending on your perspective.

Presenting that opportunity to viewers, though, presents a major dilemma for carriers. Will all viewers be interested in such interactivity? If only a percentage want it, how do you give them the option without crowding out the screen showing content?

Call it the impending collision between the limited real estate on most TV screens and the almost limitless possibilities of IPTV. If a carrier truly wants to differentiate itself with a host of TV services (massive video-on-demand libraries, gaming, interactive services, text/universal messaging, video telephony, etc.) one of the biggest challenges will be letting users know about the services without giving them a 500-button remote control or forcing them to navigate a series of menus that is perplexing to all but the most ardent consumers.

“Left to their own devices, the user isn't going to be motivated to go out and find what's out there,” said Eddie Drake, chief technology officer for middleware vendor Myrio Networks. “It depends on your philosophy on how you're going to deploy this stuff, but I think you're going to see a much more modular move. The user interface, though, is a massive challenge.”

Most vendors and carriers agree that electronic programming guides (EPGs) that scroll through current listing of programs on linear channels are of virtually no use to IPTV subscribers. Instead, almost all concur that carriers must present a menu of options that allow users to scroll through listings at their own pace.

“If you look at the problem, it's very similar to what the Web portals had to solve,” said Kanaiya Vasani, vice president of marketing for Terayon Communication Systems. “I think what's going to happen is a video portal or video interface where you launch yourself. One could easily imagine a customized mosaic of programs that you might be watching. That's coupled with the information that you usually would consume such as stock tickers, weather, traffic and maybe sports scores.”

That mosaic approach is one of the more popular options among those designing the look and feel of IPTV systems. But it doesn't solve all the issues. For one, who decides on the level of customization? If it's the user, will they use a PC or a remote to customize the content and look? And exactly how many users will take the time? Choosing the colors and content that appear on a My Yahoo page is a significantly different experience than opting to view channels in a specific order on TV. SBC, for one, is looking closely at a model popularized by TiVo in which users viewing and recording preferences are tracked and recommendations are made based on those, said Jeff Weber, SBC's vice president of product and strategy.

“What becomes real important is to have some form of search and suggest,” he said. “It's incumbent upon us to suggest content that you're interested in. It's how we present that, that ultimately will be able to differentiate our service. It's very doable with the partnerships we have.”

The search capability is becoming increasingly popular among vendors, which are shying away from the menu-driven systems that are reminiscent of past telco-video trials.