Converging Multimedia Content Presentation Requirements for Interactive Television

This work presents the development of iMediaTV, a low-cost Interactive Television service designed to adapt in order to cover varying converging 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 chapter presents and examines those 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 for convergence through the development of interactive television systems that feature advanced presentation and interaction methods. Another issue addressed in this work is the potential exploitation of the technology by those wishing to build and explore its capabilities in order to use it as a new converging communications medium. The proposed strategies may be deployed alongside traditional media-broadcasting structures enabling smooth user transition to interactive television.