Software Agents for Digital Television

Nowadays more and more audiovisual information is available, from many sources around the world. Computer and data technologies are continuing to develop at a rapid rate, providing higher performance while reducing the cost and size of the system components. Users require assistance to avoid being overwhelmed by this amount of information and the information providers require assistance in authoring and managing it. This large volume of highly dynamic and distributed audiovisual information is an ideal candidate to systems that make use of agent technology. This paper focuses on a specific problem that the audiovisual broadcasting and entertainment industry faces today and how the agent technology will aid in solving it. Intelligent agents, personalization and standards of communication and representation of audiovisual information are discussed. A generic reference model that illustrates the principal concepts and components is presented and some