Interactive television is a form of media convergence, adding data services to traditional television technology. It has included on-demand delivery of content, online shopping, and viewer polls. Interactive TV is an example of how new information technology can be integrated vertically into established technologies and commercial structures. [1]
Prior to the development of interactive television, interaction could only be simulated. In the 1950s, there were limited efforts to provide an illusion of interactive experience, most overtly with Winky Dink and You , which encouraged viewers to draw on a vinyl sheet they would attach to a television set. [2] QUBE operated an interactive cable television service in Ohio from 1977 to 1984. [3]
An interactive video-on-demand (VOD) television service was proposed in 1986 in Japan, where there were plans to develop an "Integrated Network System" service. It was intended to include various interactive services, including videotelephony, home shopping, online banking, remote work, and home entertainment services. However, it was not possible to practically implement such an interactive VOD service until the adoption of DCT and ADSL technologies made it possible in the 1990s. In early 1994, British Telecommunications (BT) began testing an interactive VOD television trial service in the United Kingdom. It used the DCT-based MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 video compression standards, along with ADSL technology. [4]
Sega Channel, a service that allowed Sega Genesis owners to download video games on demand via cable television signals, began rolling out in the United States in 1994 and was discontinued in 1998. It has been described as a form of interactive television. [5]
The first patent of interactive connected TV was granted in 1999 in the United States; it expired in 2015. [6]
ATSC 3.0, also known as "NextGen TV", adds interactivity features to terrestrial television. As of April 2022, broadcasters in 60 media markets in the United States were using ATSC 3.0. [7]
Interactive TV includes programs that directly incorporate polls, questions, comments, and other forms of audience response back into the show. For example, Australian media producer Yahoo!7's Fango mobile app allows viewers to provide material that producers can insert into live programming. During the 2012 Australian Open, viewers used the app to suggest questions for commentator Jim Courier to ask players in post-match interviews. [8]
"One-screen" formats involve interaction on the TV screen, using the remote control. Remote-control user interfaces are known in human-computer interaction research as "lean back" interaction, [9] and as a 10-foot user interface. [10] Second screen interactive TV, also called Enhanced TV by ABC and ESPN, uses a personal computer or mobile application. [11] Chat Television, developed in 1996, was the first example of a second screen interactive TV format. The system synchronized online services with television broadcasts, grouping users by time zone and program, so that all real-time viewers could participate in a chat or interactive gathering during the show's airing. [12]
Interactive TV features in smart TVs have drawn criticism because they allow TV manufacturers to collect and transmit data about customer behavior for the purposes of targeted advertising. [13]
Digital television (DTV) is the transmission of television signals using digital encoding, in contrast to the earlier analog television technology which used analog signals. At the time of its development it was considered an innovative advancement and represented the first significant evolution in television technology since color television in the 1950s. Modern digital television is transmitted in high-definition television (HDTV) with greater resolution than analog TV. It typically uses a widescreen aspect ratio in contrast to the narrower format (4:3) of analog TV. It makes more economical use of scarce radio spectrum space; it can transmit up to seven channels in the same bandwidth as a single analog channel, and provides many new features that analog television cannot. A transition from analog to digital broadcasting began around 2000. Different digital television broadcasting standards have been adopted in different parts of the world; below are the more widely used standards:
A set-top box (STB), also known as a cable box, receiver, or simply box, and historically television decoder or a converter, is an information appliance device that generally contains a TV tuner input and displays output to a television set, turning the source signal into content in a form that can then be displayed on the television screen or other display device. It is designed to be placed alongside or "on top" of a television set.
Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB) is a set of international open standards for digital television. DVB standards are maintained by the DVB Project, an international industry consortium, and are published by a Joint Technical Committee (JTC) of the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI), European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardization (CENELEC) and European Broadcasting Union (EBU).
Video on demand (VOD) is a media distribution system that allows users to access videos, television shows and films digitally on request. These multimedia are accessed without a traditional video playback device and a typical static broadcasting schedule, which was popular under traditional broadcast programming, instead involving newer modes of content consumption that have risen as Internet and IPTV technologies have become prominent, and culminated in the arrival of VOD and over-the-top (OTT) media services on televisions and personal computers.
Integrated Services Digital Broadcasting is a Japanese broadcasting standard for digital television (DTV) and digital radio.
Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) standards are an International set of standards for broadcast and digital television transmission over terrestrial, cable and satellite networks. It is largely a replacement for the analog NTSC standard and, like that standard, is used mostly in the United States, Mexico, Canada, South Korea and Trinidad & Tobago. Several former NTSC users, such as Japan, have not used ATSC during their digital television transition, because they adopted other systems such as ISDB developed by Japan, and DVB developed in Europe, for example.
Digital Video Broadcasting - Satellite - Second Generation (DVB-S2) is a digital television broadcast standard that has been designed as a successor for the popular DVB-S system. It was developed in 2003 by the Digital Video Broadcasting Project, an international industry consortium, and ratified by ETSI in March 2005. The standard is based on, and improves upon DVB-S and the electronic news-gathering system, used by mobile units for sending sounds and images from remote locations worldwide back to their home television stations.
Internet Protocol television (IPTV), also called TV over broadband, is the service delivery of television over Internet Protocol (IP) networks. Usually sold and run by a telecom provider, it consists of broadcast live television that is streamed over the Internet (multicast) — in contrast to delivery through traditional terrestrial, satellite, and cable transmission formats — as well as video on demand services for watching or replaying content (unicast).
Datacasting is the transmission of data over a wide area using radio waves. It typically refers to supplemental information sent by television stations alongside digital terrestrial television (DTT) signals. However, datacasting can also be applied to digital data signals carried on analog TV or radio broadcasts.
Electronic programming guides (EPGs) and interactive programming guides (IPGs) are menu-based systems that provide users of television, radio, and other media applications with continuously updated menus that display scheduling information for current and upcoming broadcast programming. Some guides also feature backward scrolling to promote their catch up content. They are commonly known as guides or TV guides.
The Technology and Engineering Emmy Awards, or Technology and Engineering Emmys, are one of two sets of Emmy Awards that are presented for outstanding achievement in engineering development in the television industry. The Technology and Engineering Emmy Awards are presented by the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (NATAS), while the separate Primetime Engineering Emmy Awards are given by its sister organization the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (ATAS).
An ATSCtuner, often called an ATSC receiver or HDTV tuner, is a type of television tuner that allows reception of digital television (DTV) television channels that use ATSC standards, as transmitted by television stations in North America, parts of Central America, and South Korea. Such tuners are usually integrated into a television set, VCR, digital video recorder (DVR), or set-top box which provides audio/video output connectors of various types.
In television technology, Active Format Description (AFD) is a standard set of codes that can be sent in the MPEG video stream or in the baseband SDI video signal that carries information about their aspect ratio and other active picture characteristics. It has been used by television broadcasters to enable both 4:3 and 16:9 television sets to optimally present pictures transmitted in either format. It has also been used by broadcasters to dynamically control how down-conversion equipment formats widescreen 16:9 pictures for 4:3 displays.
A digital television adapter (DTA), commonly known as a converter box or decoder box, is a television tuner that receives a digital television (DTV) transmission, and converts the digital signal into an analog signal that can be received and displayed on an analog television set. Some also have an HDMI output since some TVs with HDMI do not have a digital tuner. The input digital signal may be over-the-air terrestrial television signals received by a television antenna, or signals from a digital cable system. It normally does not refer to satellite TV, which has always required a set-top box either to operate the big satellite dish, or to be the integrated receiver/decoder (IRD) in the case of direct-broadcast satellites (DBS).
GB-PVR was a PVR application, running on Microsoft Windows, whose main function was scheduling TV recordings and playing back live TV. GB-PVR is no longer under active development and has been superseded by NextPVR, also known as nPVR.
A free-to-air or FTA Receiver is a satellite television receiver designed to receive unencrypted broadcasts. Modern decoders are typically compliant with the MPEG-2/DVB-S and more recently the MPEG-4/DVB-S2 standard for digital television, while older FTA receivers relied on analog satellite transmissions which have declined rapidly in recent years.
High-definition television (HDTV) describes a television or video system which provides a substantially higher image resolution than the previous generation of technologies. The term has been used since at least 1933; in more recent times, it refers to the generation following standard-definition television (SDTV). It is the standard video format used in most broadcasts: terrestrial broadcast television, cable television, satellite television.
A Web-to-TV installation provides a way to show streaming television or other over-the-top content from the Internet, to a television set. Various technologies to do this include Home theater PCs, digital media receivers, and Smart TVs.
A smart TV, also known as a connected TV (CTV), is a traditional television set with integrated Internet and interactive Web 2.0 features that allow users to stream music and videos, browse the internet, and view photos. Smart TVs are a technological convergence of computers, televisions, and digital media players. Besides the traditional functions of television sets provided through traditional broadcasting media, these devices can provide access to over-the-top media services such as streaming television and internet radio, along with home networking access.
The 59th Technology and Engineering Emmy Awards was held on January 8, 2008 at the 2008 International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
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