Multimedia Standards for iTV Technology

Abstract

Forms of broadcast media, such as TV and radio, are considered passive because the consumer simply receives the message and does not choose whether or not view or to listen (other than by changing the channel). Interactive television (iTV) is changing this. It gives users control over the programs they receive, as well as a range of online services such as electronic programming guides, e-mail, e-commerce, games, interactive advertising, video on demand (VOD), and Web browsing. This is taking place by creating enhanced programming and offering compelling interactive services. The iTV market is growing at a remarkable rate. Its services have been launched across many countries, including in much of Europe and the U.S. According to the state of interactive TV 2005 report from Kagan Research at present (http://www.kagan.com/), 34.1 million households subscribe to iTV services, and the number of subscribers is expected to reach 69 million by 2009. Revenues from electronic transactions for games, television, or t-commerce (television commerce), and interactive advertising are estimated to reach $2.4 million by 2009. During the same period, we estimate that the interactive services segment will generate $780 million in operator revenue or cable, digital broadcast satellites (DBS), and telecoms. The switch from analog TV to digital television is referred to as the digital TV (DTV) transition. We expect that in the coming decade most broadcast signals will become digital. In 1996, the U.S. Congress authorized the distribution of an additional broadcast channel to each TV broadcaster so that they could introduce DTV service while simultaneously continuing their analog TV broadcasts (http://www.dtv.gov/consumercorner.html). In Europe several countries have already started making digital transmissions, and gouvernment has developed a roadmap that indicates when all transmissions will be digital. For the industry point of view, over the past few years it has been developing and selling devices for digital transmission and reception. The growing integration trend between personal computers and digital TV will affect the birth of new emerging markets for interactive TV broadcasting and Web TV. They can offer several different simultaneous TV programs, with visual and sound quality that is equal to or better than what is generally available nowadays. In addition, broadcasters can simultaneously transmit a variety of other information through a data bit stream to both enhance TV programming and to provide entirely new services (http://www.dtv.gov/consumercorner.html). Both set-top boxes (STB) and DTV are able to handle digital content. The advantages of DTV consist of audio and video quality improvement, providing more channels, more languages per channel, and additional data, for instance applications delivering.