Depending on whom you listen to, the arrival of interactive TV in the US market is either just around the corner or still many years away. I will tell you without hesitation that interactive TV (iTV) is here we've just been looking at the wrong boxes.

I have seen interactive TV's future and its name is XBox. And PS3. And Wii. You might call them the Trojan Horses of iTV, although the secret is getting out.

If the future of TV means millions of people using advanced digital set-top boxes interacting with their favorite shows and advanced services offered by cable and satellite service providers, then, yes, we're still years away. Cable's EBIF enhanced TV deployments on legacy set-tops are starting to happen this year, but are still nascent, and its higher-end Tru2Way program (formerly known as OCAP), while promising, requires literally swapping out all those seven-year-amortizing STB's for either new ones or integrated TV's. Think 2012.

But if the future of TV involves millions of people engaging in truly immersive, interactive and connected entertainment experiences every day, then it has already arrived - in the form of video game consoles like the XBox 360 and Playstation 3. Gamers aren't clamoring for iTV from cable because they've already got it, except they got it from Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft.

Over the next three days, I'll describe three ways in which games are changing the channel on TV:
1) Connected game consoles are enabling new distribution platforms for TV shows and movies.
2) Games are offering new TV content programming options, from tournament shows to casual games channels.
3) The creative tools for games developers are crossing to TV, giving TV producers new options for producing everything from "Machima," animated TV shows, to realtime rendered 3D environments that offer immersive, virtual reality on TV.

Stay tuned for more...