Interactive Digital Television Applications Research Articles

Evaluation of Text Entry Methods for Interactive Digital Television Applications with Devices Alternative to Conventional Remote Controls

ABSTRACTThe popularity of Interactive Digital Television (IDTV) applications has grown in recent years, playing a significant role in today’s society. This new type of television allows users to access interactive applications in order to look for information, for communication or educational purposes, or just for fun. Most of these applications require text entry and many users expect a user experience similar to that of computers. Although the most common device to interact with television is the conventional remote control, other devices available on the market may be used in this context. Thus, in this article we aim to evaluate and compare different text input methods for IDTV applications using devices alternative to conventional remote controls. We have carried out an empirical study with 52 participants. We analyze entry speeds, error rates, and subjective impressions for six different entry methods, taking into account the particular characteristics of the users. As devices we have used a full-sized keyboard, a palm-sized keyboard, a gyroscopic remote point-select, and a modified touchpad. The fastest method is the standard keyboard, but in an IDTV context many users report discomfort and problems under low lighting conditions. Also, error rates are considerably higher with both keyboards when modifier keys need to be used. The results obtained with the gyroscopic remote and the touchpad are similar. Nevertheless, while users complain about fatigue problems with the former, their feedback about the latter is very positive. We have also observed that age is a major factor affecting the performance of the users. We expect our results to contribute to the design of new text entry methods for IDTV.

A research on typing methods for interactive Digital Television Applications

It has been several years now since we started to experience a change in traditional television services. Recently, the digitalization of these services has improved the usage of the available electromagnetic spectrum, increased the quality of the service and increased the number of channels. The next step in this evolution is the transformation of traditional television into a fully interactive service. This change allows users to run applications on the television, similar to those of mobile phones or computers. Nevertheless, the main interaction device delivered with televisions and set-top-boxes is still the traditional remote control. This device is suitable to perform certain actions such as move a pointer or select something, but it has not been designed to carry out more complex actions such as writing text. In this paper we present the main outcomes of a project aimed at researching typing methods for interactive digital television services. During the project we have carried out several experiments with real users, who had to use different typing methods and devices that may be suitable for interactive digital television applications

Evaluating interactive digital television applications through usability heuristics

La Television Digital Interactiva (TDi) es considerada como la convergencia de la television y las tecnologias de la computacion. La evaluacion de usabilidad para aplicaciones basadas en tecnologias emergentes trae nuevos retos. La principal caracteristica de la TDi es que los usuarios pueden interactuar con las aplicaciones; de esta manera la usabilidad es el principal aspecto a considerar cuando se disenan aplicaciones de TDi. Las investigaciones actuales normalmente estan enfocadas sobre las aplicaciones de TDi desde un punto de vista tecnico, y no desde un enfoque centrado en el usuario. Hay una necesidad de nuevos metodos de evaluacion de usabilidad o, por lo menos, utilizar de nuevas formas los metodos de evaluacion existentes. Un conjunto de heuristicas de usabilidad especificas ha sido definido y validado, con el objetivo de ayudar en la evaluacion de usabilidad de aplicaciones de TDi. Tambien se ha propuesto una lista de verificacion para ser usada al momento de aplicar las heuristicas de usabilidad.

Evaluation of Virtual Keyboards for Interactive Digital Television Applications

The development of the technologies behind Interactive Digital Television (IDTV) services has produced a new type of audience. Traditional viewers now become users as they may play an active role in front of the TV, for example, by choosing a video to be played on demand or by introducing text on an IDTV application. In these services, interactions need to be performed with a remote control, currently the main interaction device, or other devices such as keyboards or mice, which are not very popular in this environment. Nevertheless, although remote controls are essential tools for IDTV services, they are very limited when it comes to writing text. Thus, this study evaluated different alternatives to introduce text on an IDTV application with a remote control. A heterogeneous group of people was selected to write predefined sentences in Spanish in a test environment using three virtual keyboard layouts and the multitap mechanism. Their performance and subjective impressions reveal weaknesses and strengths of the evaluated methods. The article draws important conclusions about the usage of remote controls in IDTV applications, not only for the design of new applications but also for the research of new techniques to introduce text.

TripFromTV+: targeting personalized tourism to interactive digital TV viewers by social networking and semantic reasoning

Interactive Digital Television applications bring new value-added functionalities to viewers. In order to fight the current information overload, many of these applications offer personalization capabilities, by matching each viewer's preferences against the available resources. This paper describes TripFromTV+, an interactive application that provides cut-price tailor-made tourist packages by helping the viewer to decide what to do and what to visit during a trip. Different from the existing approaches, this application automatically infers the viewer's preferences from the kind of TV programs he/she enjoyed and from his/her activity in social networking sites, whose diffusion mechanisms are exploited to make the existing tourism offers known among the viewer's contacts. The paper shows how interactive TV applications can incorporate content from the Internet, by creating seamlessly integrated presentations that allow the viewer to have the advantages of the network capabilities in the TV environment through domestic and mobile consumer devices.

Return channel for the Brazilian digital television system-terrestrial

Abstract Recently, it has been proposed the use of WiMAX for the return channel in digital television systems using a new frequency profile bellow 1 GHz, which has been calledWiMAX-700. The profile operates from 400 MHz to 960 MHz as primary band, which includes the UHF band, and optionally from 54 MHz to 400 MHz as secondary band. This work presents some aspects of the WiMAX-700 technology and some simulation results of models designed to determine the system capacity concerning the number of actives subscriber stations, according to specific proposed scenarios, traffic sources profiles, specifics propagation, and coverage conditions. The results presented in this work provide elements to determine the suitability of WiMAX-700 technology as the return channel for the interactive digital television applications.

Design and implementation of an end-to-end operation system for digital television

This paper addresses an end-to-end operation system for digital television (DTV) applications. It is designed to develop, broadcast, download and execute interactive DTV applications. The system is composed of three subsystems. They are application execution system (AES), data broadcast system (DBS) and application development environment (ADE). AES, generally called DTV middleware system, is the software system running in DTV se-top box (STB) to execute and control interactive DTV applications. It isolates DTV applications from STB hardware. DBS is used to multiplex, transmit and broadcast DTV data, as well as manage DTV applications. ADE is a special integrative toolkit designed for developing interactive DTV applications. Application developers can edit, compile, debug and test a DTV application in ADE. Then DBS broadcasts the application through DTV channel. After being downloaded into STB, the application is executed by AES in the STB. Design and implementation of these three subsystems are presented in this paper. The proposed system has been used in real environment of interactive DTV operation