Interactive TV in a Digital Era: A Standards Perspective

Interactive television (ITV) has been around for many years, but has been handicapped by the limited capacity of analog delivery. With the transition to digital television broadcasting infrastructures around the world providing increased flexibility and greater downstream data rates to support interactive television content/services, the prospects for growth are high. This paper provides a tutorial on the standards issues involved, including aspects of interactive content carriage in the DTV broadcast, a comparison of declarative versus procedural content, and a review of approaches being considered by the relevant standards bodies.