eTV - Models
Setting future standards: Development Communities
Individuals, organizations and industries with shared interests form alliances and create development communities.
They have:
- Organizational structure
- Self-imposed guidelines
- A means of sharing information
- Interaction through forums, electronic newsletters and conferences
- An overarching interest in protecting the interests of their membership.
Interactive digital broadcasters from around the globe participate in industry-led consortiums to ensure open standards and a means of sharing development information. These cross-industry alliances minimize investment risk and help create agreed-upon standards.
AFI- The American Film Institute serves film, television and video artists and is dedicated to “preserving the art of the moving image,” (www.afi.com). In 1998 The AFI began sponsoring a series of enhanced television workshops to explore the best ways of developing effective interactive programming compatible with new and emerging technologies. Their ongoing workshops provide TV producers with a means to showcase their work and stimulate creation of working prototypes.
ITVT – Tracy Swedlow’s InteractiveTV Today is a web-based organization featuring a number of resources for iTV developers. ITVT’s website, www.itvt.com, provides a newsletter, journal articles, an on-line glossary and screenshots of a number of enhanced and interactive television examples.
ATVEF - The Advanced Television Enhancement Forum seeks to create a unified pathway for interactive content developers ensuring widespread compatibility throughout cable, terrestrial, satellite and local distribution networks, regardless of the distribution path.
To minimize the need for developing new technologies, the ATVEF specification supports existing web standards such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Content specifications provide a means to incorporate HTML and TV content. The organization offers membership, news and provides technical documents from their website at www.atvef.com.
ATSC – The Advanced Television Systems Committee was formed in 1982 as a not-for-profit, cross industry organization seeking to develop voluntary standards. The FCC adopted ATSC-developed standards for the changeover to digital transmission. Their DTV standard has also been adopted in Canada. (www.atsc.org)
SMPTE - The Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers is the leading technical society of the film and video industry. Formed in 1916, SMPTE functions to establish industry standards, enhance education through seminars, communicate the latest developments in technology, and promote networking and interaction (SMPTE 2002). SMPTE has recently created a new standard, SMPTE DDE-1, a compliant version of ATVEF 1.1r26. (www.smpte.org)
DVB – Composed mainly of members from the European television, broadcast and data industries, Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB) is focused on developing global standards for digital television and broadcast. DVB has already successfully implemented a series of technical standards for digital broadcast.
Similar to ATVEF's adoption of Web-based protocol, the DVD-MHP standard specifies Java as the application environment for both enhanced and interactive broadcasts and has recently been adopted by a US company, CableLabs. The set-top-box manufacturer will begin selling units following the DVB-MHP specification. (www.dvb.org)
Introduction - Applications - Models - Impact - E-Commerce - Conclusion - Reference