New Standard Expected to Push Over-Air Interactive TV’s Success
Over-the-air interactive TV (iTV) is expected to arrive in consumers’ homes in 5 years, offering a new business to broadcasters and satellite providers, predicted Advanced TV Systems Committee (ATSC) Pres. Mark Richer. The ATSC held a seminar Tues. on the standard, the Advanced Common Application Platform (ACAP), which is expected to be completed and published in the next several months, Richer said.
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Consumer demand and simple applications will drive iTV success in the U.S., Richer said. The technology, for example, could allow consumers watching the Home Shopping Network to hit a “buy” button on the remote, instead of dialing an 800 number to make a purchase. Consumers could also customize news, weather and traffic reports. With the rapid adoption of digital video technology, the stage is set for the creation of an iTV segment that shows consumers a whole new way of interacting with TV, Richer said. In Oct., ATSC successfully harmonized its DTV Application Software Environment specifications with CableLabs’ Open Cable Application Platform specifications to create ACAP, officials said.
Interactive programming content is run on a common receiver that contains well-defined architecture, execution model, syntax and semantics, ATSC said. The interactive content is delivered to a consumer’s home through a broadcasters’ digital signal. The consumers’ return path of information is through a cable set-top box or dial-up or a DSL line. It wasn’t known how much the receiver would cost. “It’s like with any new technology, the price would be initially high and then come down,” an attendee said, comparing iTV to HDTV sets.
As a middleware specification for interactive applications, ACAP gives content providers assurance that their programs and data are received and running uniformly on all brands and models of receivers, said Craig Smithpeters of Cox Communications, who led the effort to develop ACAP.
ACAP uses 2 applications to process information to viewers, said Azita Manson, Scientific-Atlanta senior staff engineer. An ACAP-J application is a Java TV Xlet made up of compiled Java byte codes and other multimedia content such as graphics, video and audio. An ACAP-X application is a multimedia document of XHTML markup, style rules, scripts and embedded graphics, video and audio. The architecture is intended to apply to broadcast systems and receivers for broadcast and cable TV systems, Manson said. Some of the same architecture may be applied to other transport systems, such as satellite. ACAP is based mainly on the Globally Executable Multimedia home platform, which offers a high degree of interoperability among different environments based on DTV specifications from the ATSC and the Society of Cable Telecom Engineers. More information about ACAP is available at www.atsc.org.