Semi-automated creation of converged iTV services: From macromedia director simulations to services ready for broadcast

While sound and video may capture viewers’ attention, interaction can captivate them. This has not been available prior to the advent of Digital Television. In fact, what lies at the heart of the Digital Television revolution is this new type of interactive content, offered in the form of interactive Television (iTV) services. On top of that, the new world of converged networks has created a demand for a new type of converged services on a range of mobile terminals (Tablet PCs, PDAs and mobile phones). This paper aims at presenting a new approach to service creation that allows for the semi-automatic translation of simulations and rapid prototypes created in the accessible desktop multimedia authoring package Macromedia Director into services ready for broadcast. This is achieved by a series of tools that de-skill and speed-up the process of creating digital TV user interfaces (UI) and applications for mobile terminals. The benefits of rapid prototyping are essential for the production of these new types of services, and are therefore discussed in the first section of this paper. In the following sections, an overview of the operation of content, service, creation and management sub-systems is presented, which illustrates why these tools compose an important and integral part of a system responsible of creating, delivering and managing converged broadcast and telecommunications services. The next section examines a number of metadata languages candidates for describing the iTV services user interface and the schema language adopted in this project. A detailed description of the operation of the two tools is provided to offer an insight of how they can be used to de-skill and speed-up the process of creating digital TV user interfaces and applications for mobile terminals. Finally, representative broadcast oriented and telecommunication oriented converged service components are also introduced, demonstrating how these tools have been used to generate different types of services

Service Platform for Converged Interactive Broadband Broadcast and Cellular Wireless

A converged broadcast and telecommunication service platform is presented that is able to create, deliver, and manage interactive, multimedia content and services for consumption on three different terminal types. The motivations of service providers for designing converged interactive multimedia services, which are crafted for their individual requirements, are investigated. The overall design of the system is presented with particular emphasis placed on the operational features of each of the sub-systems, the flows of media and metadata through the sub-systems and the formats and protocols required for inter-communication between them. The key features of tools required for creating converged interactive multimedia content for a range of different end-user terminal types are examined. Finally possible enhancements to this system are discussed. This study is of particular interest to those organizations currently conducting trials and commercial launches of DVB-H services because it provides them with an insight of the various additional functions required in the service provisioning platforms to provide fully interactive services to a range of different mobile terminal types

Digital television applications

Studying development of interactive services for digital television is a leading edge area of work as there is minimal research or precedent to guide their design. Published research is limited and therefore this thesis aims at establishing a set of computing methods using Java and XML technology for future set-top box interactive services. The main issues include middleware architecture, a Java user interface for digital television, content representation and return channel communications. The middleware architecture used was made up of an Application Manager, Application Programming Interface (API), a Java Virtual Machine, etc., which were arranged in a layered model to ensure the interoperability. The application manager was designed to control the lifecycle of Xlets; manage set-top box resources and remote control keys and to adapt the graphical device environment. The architecture of both application manager and Xlet forms the basic framework for running multiple interactive services simultaneously in future set-top box designs. User interface development is more complex for this type of platform (when compared to that for a desktop computer) as many constraints are set on the look and feel (e.g., TV-like and limited buttons). Various aspects of Java user interfaces were studied and my research in this area focused on creating a remote control event model and lightweight drawing components using the Java Abstract Window Toolkit (AWT) and Java Media Framework (JMF) together with Extensible Markup Language (XML). Applications were designed aimed at studying the data structure and efficiency of the XML language to define interactive content. Content parsing was designed as a lightweight software module based around two parsers (i.e., SAX parsing and DOM parsing). The still content (i.e., text, images, and graphics) and dynamic content (i.e., hyperlinked text, animations, and forms) can then be modeled and processed efficiently. This thesis also studies interactivity methods using Java APIs via a return channel. Various communication models are also discussed that meet the interactivity requirements for different interactive services. They include URL, Socket, Datagram, and SOAP models which applications can choose to use in order to establish a connection with the service or broadcaster in order to transfer data. This thesis is presented in two parts: The first section gives a general summary of the research and acts as a complement to the second section, which contains a series of related publications.reviewe

Semi-automated mobile television interactive application generation based on XHTML and Java ME

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University, 11/02/2011.Mobile Digital TV (MDTV), the hybrid of Digital Television (DTV) and mobile devices (such as mobile phones), has introduced a new way for people to watch DTV and has brought new opportunities for development in the DTV industry. Nowadays, the development of the next generation MDTV service has progressed in terms of both hardware layers and software, with interactive services/applications becoming one of the future MDTV service trends. However, current MDTV interactive services still lack in terms of attracting the consumers and the service creation and implementation process relies too much on commercial solutions, resulting in most parts of the process being proprietary. In addition, this has increased the technical demands for developers as well as has increased substantially the cost of producing and maintaining MDTV services. In light of the aforementioned situation, the Thesis has contributed to this field, by proposing an innovative MDTV service creation and consumption system based on XHTML and Java ME. On the head-end it introduces a semi-automatic creation mechanism to facilitate a less technical and more efficient interactive service creation process. This enables designers and creative individuals to be actively involved in the MDTV service creation process and to develop interactive-rich MDTV service. On the client-end it employs an open-source software environment as the interactive service MDTV consumption platform, rendering the MDTV service implementation process as less proprietary as possible. Furthermore, the Thesis offers a discussion on the different MDTV interactive application models currently used and based on the proposed software, a novel MDTV service presentation method is further introduced and adopted instead of the Rich Media and ECMAScript based methods. Finally, a series of qualitative testing procedures have been implemented with regards to conducting an essential evaluation on the operability of the proposed software system

Cooperating broadcast and cellular conditional access system for digital television

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.The lack of interoperability between Pay‐TV service providers and a horizontally integrated business transaction model have compromised the competition in the Pay‐TV market. In addition, the lack of interactivity with customers has resulted in high churn rate and improper security measures have contributed into considerable business loss. These issues are the main cause of high operational costs and subscription fees in the Pay‐TV systems. This paper presents a novel end‐to‐end system architecture for Pay‐TV systems cooperating mobile and broadcasting technologies. It provides a cost‐effective, scalable, dynamic and secure access control mechanism supporting converged services and new business opportunities in Pay‐TV systems. It enhances interactivity, security and potentially reduces customer attrition and operational cost. In this platform, service providers can effectively interact with their customers, personalise their services and adopt appropriate security measures. It breaks up the rigid relationship between a viewer and set‐top box as imposed by traditional conditional access systems, thus, a viewer can fully enjoy his entitlements via an arbitrary set‐top box. Having thoroughly considered state‐of‐the‐art technologies currently being used across the world, the thesis highlights novel use cases and presents the full design and implementation aspects of the system. The design section is enriched by providing possible security structures supported thereby. A business collaboration structure is proposed, followed by a reference model for implementing the system. Finally, the security architectures are analysed to propose the best architecture on the basis of security, complexity and set‐top box production cost criteria

A cooperative cellular and broadcast conditional access system for Pay-TV systems

This is the author's accepted manuscript. The final published article is available from the link below. Copyright @ 2009 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other users, including reprinting/ republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted components of this work in other works.The lack of interoperability between Pay-TV service providers and a horizontally integrated business transaction model have compromised the competition in the Pay-TV market. In addition, the lack of interactivity with customers has resulted in high churn rate and improper security measures have contributed into considerable business loss. These issues are the main cause of high operational costs and subscription fees in the Pay-TV systems. As a result, this paper presents the Mobile Conditional Access System (MICAS) as an end-to-end access control solution for Pay-TV systems. It incorporates the mobile and broadcasting systems and provides a platform whereby service providers can effectively interact with their customers, personalize their services and adopt appropriate security measurements. This would result in the decrease of operating expenses and increase of customers' satisfaction in the system. The paper provides an overview of state-of-the-art conditional access solutions followed by detailed description of design, reference model implementation and analysis of possible MICAS security architectures.Strategy & Technology (S&T) Lt

Converged digital TV services: the role of middleware and future directions of interactive television

The subject of the future of the interactive Television medium has become a topic of great interest to the academic and industrial communities particularly since in the recent years there has been a dramatic increase in the pace of innovation of convergence of digital TV systems and services. The purpose of this paper is to provide a brief overview of what we know as digital TV converged services, to present and categorise the digital Television middleware technologies that contributed to it, and to present possible future trends and directions. A new Television era of converged wireless and mobile content delivery, user-authored content, multimodal interaction, intelligent personalisation, smart space awareness, and 3D content sensations is foreseen, creating ambient and immersive experiences

Standards, IPR and digital TV convergence: theories and empirical evidence

none1Media convergence presents a few noticeable dimensions, and requests an interdisciplinary research approach. We conduct a long-run analysis of the main initiatives of technological standardization carried out in the realm of “traditional” (cable, satellite and terrestrial) digital TV, focusing on Europe, to assess the technological determinants of its apparent trends to convergence. This analysis inevitably calls into question IPR strategies and policies. In particular, we investigate how private incentives and the public agenda for interoperability have shaped the on-going convergence of the TV sector toward an “IP-based” meta-platform. Despite the widespread usage of open standards and formats, the real potential for interoperability along the digital TV filière has been modest, and mostly limited to the transmission segment. This is mainly due to the strong proprietary features characterizing the TV sector, where viable content production and provision rests on effective control of content IPR. Further, patent portfolio strategies and control of crucial copyrights become increasingly central for competing in the converging TV sector, where former telecom companies, traditional TV operators and new OTT players strive to become gatekeepers of essential layers of the new IP-based delivery platforms. To sum up, while technological opportunities today do enable pervasive media interoperability and affordable convergence at the user-level, private incentives relentlessly push the industry toward standards fragmentation and the construction of walled gardens.MPRA Working paper series n. 59359, Munich Personal RePEc ArchiveMatteucci NMatteucci, Nicol