This book provides professionals with information on technical, strategic, and creative aspects of developing interactive television (ITV) systems and shows how to assess the future business potential of ITV. It explains technical areas associated with the switch to digital bandwidth, and describes design practices, such as embedding of extended codes and syntax in programs for content creation. The book then explores how ITV programming enhances the value of programs and encourages viewers to order online goods and services, and describes the profit potential of ITV. Case histories are provided of major players in the industry around the world. The author is chief engineer and head of AIR Resources of All India Radio. c. Book News Inc.

&Quot;This forward-looking book focuses on interactive television (ITV), and illustrates how it is changing the face of TV broadcasting. The book provides professionals with important technical, strategic, and creative expertise to help in the development of ITV systems and with the assessment of their future business potential. Interactive TV Technology and Markets explains how bandwidth limitations associated with analog TV signals are eliminated as cable, satellite, and terrestrial TV network operators switch to digital bandwidth."--BOOK JACKET.

For any digital TV developer or manager, the maze of standards and specifications related to MHP and OCAP is daunting-you have to patch together pieces from several standards to gather all the necessary knowledge you need to compete worldwide. The standards themselves can be confusing, and contain many inconsistencies and missing pieces. Interactive TV Standards provides a guide for actually deploying these technologies for a broadcaster or product and application developer. Understanding what the APIs do is essential for your job, but understanding how the APIs work and how they relate to each other at a deeper level helps you do it better, faster and easier. Learn how to spot when something that looks like a good solution to a problem really isn't. Understand how the many standards that make up MHP fit together, and implement them effectively and quickly. Two DVB insiders teach you which elements of the standards that are needed for digital TV, highlight those elements that are not needed, and explain the special requirements that MHP places on implementations of these standards. Once you've mastered the basics, you will learn how to develop products for US, European, and Asian markets--saving time and money. By detailing how a team can develop products for both the OCAP and MHP markets, Interactive TV Standards teaches you how to to leverage your experience with one of these standards into the skills and knowledge needed to work with the critical, related standards. Does the team developing a receiver have all the knowledge they need to succeed, or have they missed important information in an apparently unrelated standard? Does an application developer really know how to write a reliable piece of software that runs on any MHP or OCAP receiver? Does the broadcaster understand the business and technical issues well enough to deploy MHP successfully, or will their project fail? Increase your chances of success the first time with Interactive TV Standards.

Aimed at broadcasting and new media producers and anyone interested in implementing interactive TV, this is a practical guide to the technology and production processes, offering technical descriptions of how interactive TV works.

"Addressing the issues that managers in the multimedia industry have confronted while developing and implementing this innovative technology, this book focuses on the latest research and findings in digital television technologies. Covered are the major issues surrounding digital convergence including the digital metamarket and new digital media devices and their potential for IT convergence at the macro level. Also addressed are multimedia and interactive digital television and the economic implications of these technologies. Additionally, the managerial implications of interactive digital television are covered, including branding strategies for digital television channels and the critical role of content media management."

The developments in digital television technology provide the unprecedented opportunity to drastically extend the role of television as a content delivery channel. E-health, e-commerce, e-government, and e-learning are only a few examples of value-added services provided over digital televisions infrastructures. These changes in the television industry challenge companies to adjust their strategies in order to meet the opportunities and threats in this new environment. Interactive Digital Television: Techniques and Applications presents the developments in the domain of interactive digital television covering both technical and business aspects. This book focuses on analyzing concepts, research issues, and methodological approaches, presenting existing solutions such as systems and prototypes for researchers, academicians, scholars, professionals and practitioners.

"This book discusses the advent of social interactive television with its complex opportunities and challenges for media researchers and others today"--Provided by publisher.