By Hervé Utheza, Liberate Technologies
As deployments of interactive television gain momentum, triggers that enable enhancements to TV programs and commercials will increasingly be inserted into the broadcast stream so the enhancement is synchronized with the video programming. Enhanced broadcast and synchronization will become the norm in digital, as well as analog environments. Delivery of enhancements poses great challenges for existing networks. Primary considerations include the traffic bursts to the network invited by triggers; upstream and downstream system bandwidth; Internet backbones access and servers; and the limitations of some set-top boxes to receive/extract triggers. This paper provides an overview of a solution for the economical delivery of enhancements on existing networks. As this solution could be applied globally, this paper is focused on solutions for systems in North America.