Delivering Interactive Enhanced Sports Content to Thin-Client DTV STBs

Digital Television (DTV) was the first major advance in the television industry since the establishment of color TV sets in the 50's. However, despite the ambitious anticipations, most DTV operators offering subscriber TV services are facing serious economic problems. Many believe that significantly increasing the DTV operator revenues is closely linked to the provision of advanced interactive TV applications which, on one-hand, based on content enhancements will attract more subscribers, and on the other hand will also generate indirect revenues through services like TV-commerce or on-line betting. In this paper an end-to-end interactive TV application is presented. The application has been developed for accompanying sport broadcasts, given that sports content is very attractive for the majority of subscribers. This application enhances sport broadcasts with relevant content (statistics, news, information) appearing on user-demand, as well as with an innovative interactive entertaining game of predictions challenging users to make predictions and to prove their anticipatory skills and sport knowledge. The application supports multiple types of forward and return channels and STB middleware systems. Furthermore, its components can be used in content distribution networks targeting multiple network-enabled information appliances