Overview of Open Standards for Interactive TV (iTV)

Television has become the most important mass medium. The digitalisation in progress gives new possibilities to enrich the television experience. The Electronic Program Guide - though still very limited - gives a first impression of future television. There are various attempts to give the audience a more active role. All these can be found under the topic interactive TV. Besides the world of television, there is a fast growing community for videos in the World Wide Web (e.g. YouTube¹ or MyVideo²). Until today interactivity in “WWW-videos” is of minor importance, but has a great potential for growth. It has not reached a similar level of professionalism as in iTV and no open standards have been introduced. Thus we will concentrate on interactivity in traditional TV. In this chapter, we present different forms of interaction in television and give an extensive overview of existing platforms and standards like MHEG, DAVIC, Java TV, MHP, GEM, OCAP and ACAP. Also the underlying technology that forms the basis for these standards is presented in short. Finally, the relationships between the different standards and a look at future trends of iTV will be given.

¹ YouTube – http://www.youtube.com/

² MyVideo – http://www.myvideo.de/