TV Change Technical Advances, Web-Site Entertainment May Transform Our Use Of Television

Watch out. They want to take your TV away.

Oh, it won’t happen tomorrow, or even the day after that.

But there’s growing talk, and evidence to back it up, that TV as we know it is going the way of the gramophone. (Maybe that’s what the millennium is really all about.)

Between the onset of high-definition TV, which they say will give you a crystal-clear version of all the programs you thought you were happy seeing fuzzy, and the growing intrusion of the computer, a high-tech headache you used to be able to escape by watching TV, the concept of television is changing before your very eyes.

Although not, perhaps, in your very living room.

Take HDTV. You can’t buy one of those souped-up sets yet and, if you could, you couldn’t, because you wouldn’t be able to afford it. But HDTV is coming in the next few years, with its higher resolution and eventually lowered price tag.

Just can’t wait? Neither could NBC’s “Meet the Press,” which began airing in HDTV last month.

No reason is good enough to explain why such wonderful technology is squandered on televising Washington pols. But for now it’s just for practice anyway, since no viewers can receive the new, improved product (no more than you could see color on a black-and-white set).

But even while you wait for that whole new viewing experience HDTV promises, you can watch the tendrils of TVs and computers ever more surely intertwine. And with a gadget like WebTV you can witness it all without leaving the couch.

Thanks to WebTV, you not only can watch TV, you can go online with your TV set.

From broadcasting, you can watch “Xena: Warrior Princess,” where unfold the adventures of a strapping female hero in an unforgiving world.

From online, starting this summer, you can see “WhirlGirl,” where unfold the adventures of a strapping female hero in an unforgiving world.

Both series want to be TV yet seem to claim a more direct lineage from comic books. Or Greek mythology. In short, very cutting-edge.

MSNBC pronounced itself cutting-edge when it signed on last summer with corresponding cable-TV and online identities (http://www.msnbc.com).

Now, more and more news outlets are getting in the act.

Fox News Channel is simulcasting its TV programming at its World Wide Web site (http:/ /www.foxnews.com), and CNN just announced plans to provide full video coverage of programs from its business-news cable channel (http:/ /www.cnnfn.com).

But cyber-content goes much further than news and information.

NBC has spun off its cop drama “Homicide” into an online counterpart called “Second Shift” (http://www.nbc.com).

Computer impresarios, too, are looking to come up with TV-like fare.

Last week, America Online announced it had signed Brandon Tartikoff to develop talk shows, dramas and comedies. The goal, he says, is an Internet-based entertainment network.

Tartikoff was the programming whiz at NBC in the age of “Hill Street Blues,” “The Cosby Show” and “Miami Vice.” More recently an independent producer, he has not enjoyed quite the same level of success (“Last Call”? “The Mark Walberg Show”?).

Of course, maybe that’s not a problem in his new venue. Lately at AOL, subscribers have measured success by whether they could even get a connection. For those privileged to log in, content was gravy.

But you don’t need to be a player like Tartikoff or a giant like America Online to stake a claim on the Internet. Visionary Media, a tiny, Manhattan-based “new media” company, expects to gain instant, international visibility for “WhirlGirl” when it officially premieres in July.

“WhirlGirl” is the saga of Kia Cross, described as “a 21st-century 20-something” who becomes a superhero to help a rebel movement liberate the virtual universe from a tyrannical media-tech empire. Weekly installments will consist of a dozen linked Web pages (http://www.whirlgirl.com/).

But “WhirlGirl” won’t be a prisoner of her Web site. At least, Visionary Media hopes not. The idea is to introduce her there, then turn her loose to conquer other media with bigger audiences and bigger paydays.

That is, more conventional media. Like television, for instance. Say, in a “WhirlGirl” TV series. The sort of TV you’ve been watching for years. The TV that’s right where you left it.