Global ITV concept

To fulfil its objectives, the GLOBAL ITV builds upon a two-fold concept. One part of the project focusses on the technical R&D side while the second part of the project deals with strategic market, innovation and dissemination issues:

Joint technical approach – a short-term proof-of-concept and a long-term strategy

The goal of defining a platform that blazes the trail for globally interoperable interactive TV applications will be pursued by an agile approach. Functional requirements, as demanded of the intended platform will be gained from scenarios cooperatively defined by Brazilian and European ITV experts with technological, innovative and creative background. The scenarios will picture the vision of use-cases of future GLOBAL ITV applications, from a business as well as from a societal point of view.

Strictly aligned to fulfil the elicited functional requirements, the GLOBAL ITV platform specifications will be developed. A fundamental step in this process will be a deep analysis of existing Interactive, Connected, Web and Hybrid TV systems. This procedure will identify commonalities and disparities between existing technologies as well as evaluate the technologies’ individual strengths and weaknesses. This indispensable step will help to identify components which can be efficiently reused and referenced. Whenever required, GLOBAL ITV will extent or adapt profiles and (sub-) specifications to fulfil GLOBAL ITV’s requirements. Building upon this foundation, the GLOBAL ITV platform specification will be defined. Here the project can profit from the extensive experience of the involved partners in Brazil and Europe.

On the basis of the platform specification, compliant prototypes on the backend (play-out) and the frontend (set-top box) will be developed. Having these technical prerequisites available, applications will be developed that can show-case attractive and meaningful scenarios in a TV program context as well as for applications of public interest (e.g. education). Proof-of-concept prototypes and demo applications will be used to evaluate whether the platform definition is consistent. Valuable feedback will be gained from the developers of the prototypes (backend, frontend and applications) as well as from user tests which will provide very direct results on practical aspects.

In a cyclic approach, results from this evaluation processes will be fed back to the specification activity in order to iteratively improve and perfect the GLOBAL ITV platform. Furthermore, experiences gathered during the application development will be pooled in best practise guidelines for the development of GLOBAL ITV-compliant applications.

The overall outcomes of the project activities will conclude into a long term strategy for achieving the goal to create a globally interoperable ITV platform.

Project details

ERCIM's role:

Project partner

Duration: 24 months from December 2013 to November 2015

Partners:

European Partners:

IRT – Institut für Rundfunktechnik GmbH (DE), Aqua Consult Ingenieros SL (ES), VESTEL (TR), Fraunhofer-FOKUS (DE), TDF (FR), Retevisión SA (ES), Symelar Innovación (ES), European Broadcasting Union (CH), ERCIM/W3C

Brazilian partners:

Universidade de São Paulo, Universidade Católica de Brasília, Universidade Federal do Pará, Universidade Estadual Paulista “Júlio de Mesquita Filho”, Associação do Laboratório de Sistemas Integráveis Tecnológico, Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Universidade Federal do ABC, BAND TV, HXD Interactive Television