Adapting Interactive TV to Meet Multimedia Content Presentation Requirements

This work presents the development of innovative content for a low-cost Interactive Television service designed to adapt in order to cover varying content presentation and interaction requirements: from standard streamed content to new-media artwork. In this process, content, system and user complexities are introduced that need to be resolved before artwork with different requirements may be supported effectively for broadcasting. This article presents and examines these issues from the content-requirements perspective, using a number of real-life case studies. Under this context it is shown that content with novel presentation/interaction requirements may act as a driver enabling the development of an experimental multimedia system that features advanced presentation and interaction methods. Another issue addressed in this work is the potential exploitation of the technology by those who whish to build and explore the capabilities of interactive TV in order to use it as a new communication medium. Keywords— Interactive television, interactive new-media arts content, experimental multimedia systems, user and content factors.