Electronic Publishing: Beethoven meets the Klingons

CD-Roms with pictures, sound, videos and graphics? That's 'infotainment '

You have to give Bill Gates credit. The Microsoft supremo may have been caught unawares by the Internet, but he caught on to multimedia at just the right time.

Microsoft was one of the first companies to produce a range of "infotainment" titles on CD-Rom. Infotainment is a new category of software that combines information with entertaining multimedia features such as sound and video.

Its first titles were studies of Mozart and Beethoven that contained music clips, text and illustrations. These sold well but they were a bit dull.

A British company called Media Design Interactivehelped to point the way forward for infotainment software when it published a CD-Rom called Creepy Crawlies.

Filled with video clips of spiders, snakes and other squirmy creatures, it was a surprise hit and one of the first big-selling CD-Rom titles here.

Microsoft got on the case, with Dangerous Creatures and a Dinosaurs CD-Rom. Now there are hundreds of infotainment titles available, from Oz Clarke's Wine Guide to Dr Ruth's Encyclopedia of Sex. Even Mrs Beeton's Book of Cookery and Home Management made it to CD-Rom.

CD-Roms tend to be more expensive than books, typically costing pounds 20-pounds 50 per title. These prices will come down as sales volumes increase, but they will probably always be more expensive than books because of the cost of designing and editing the content.

Children's educational titles are especially popular, and there are several companies that specialise in this field.

The educational publisher Dorling Kindersley has a range of excellent titles based on its children's books, including the award-winning PB Bear's Birthday Party.

Musicians were quick to spot the potential of multimedia, and some genuinely innovative titles have been produced by artists such as Peter Gabriel. His XPlora CD-Rom puts the user inside a virtual studio, allowing you to pick up instruments and interact with pre-recorded album tracks.

Many CD-Rom titles are now big-budget productions involving teams of artists, animators and musicians, just like a Hollywood film. In fact, there's an increasing overlap between film and CD-Rom,and this is giving rise to yet another form of CD-Rom.

Increasingly CD-Rom is being used to create entertainment software that is more like a film than a book. The new Star Trek CD-Rom, Klingon, for example, contains scenes that were shot specially for it.

This is moving away from book publishing into the realm of broadcasting and virtual reality. But the multimedia industry is still in its infancy. With new, high-capacity DVD disks due for release later this year, no one can predict how far the CD-Rom format will go.

CJ