Introduction Treatments of interactive television (ITV) in the popular press could easily lead readers to think that it is an entirely new phenomenon or, indeed, that it has yet to arrive on the scene (1). However, ITV has been tested in the marketplace under various guises in each decade since the 1950s. Our lack of historical perspective is unfortunate because there are many clues in the hist...

Digital television broadcast started in Finland on 27 th of August 2001. A new period in this entertainment field has already begun. Because of the importance of television in the society, the shift between analogue and digital has to be done with the viewers in mind. The User Interface of any application provides the user the means to communicate with the system. Since it is what the viewer ca...

Television (or “TV”) broadcasting today is in the wake of a critical technological revolution. The development of new technologies is becoming increasingly rapid and the legal scenario is changing daily and sometimes disorganically. Regulation in this field is strictly connected with technology and its evolution. For this reason, it is worthwhile to go through a brief outline of the last and mo...

Television use does not require high skill or effort, which is ideal as a paradigm of use for ambient user interfaces. In this paper, universal access in ambient intelligence is modeled after the use of TV in everyday life. Instead of considering television only as a content medium and the focus of user activity, an alternative approach is to consider television use as a secondary function to o...

This paper describes the Microsoft Interactive Television (MITV) system. An overview of the different components of the system is presented. The development process is described. Finally, experiences and lessons learned from the system are presented. The system is designed to be able to provide traditional television service, video-on-demand service, and custom interactive applications, such as...