Enabling Custom Enhancements in Digital Sports Broadcasts

Digital TV is an area where interaction is expected to become increasingly prevalent in the next few years. Graphics technologies like VRML that are designed for distributing applications provide a presentation engine that can serve as a foundation for moving visual enhancements from the studio to the consumer platform. As these enhancements move downstream to viewers, they introduce capabilities for compelling interaction. We have developed a prototype that extends VRML to support interactive TV applications, specifically focusing on enhancements for sports broadcasts. Our extensions are built on Blendo [1], a presentation engine developed in Sony that derives from VRML. This paper describes the context for our extensions and the specific extensions that we have developed so far. Keywords Applications, Digital TV, Graphics Systems, Interactive TV, Multimedia, Sports Broadcasting, Video, VRML. 1. INTRODUCTION Interactive TV is evolving as a compelling space for new media applicati..