Interactive Television: an Overview and Future Prospect

This document aims at assessing the state and prospect of Interactive Television and presents a few possible needs for advanced human interface technology. As a first step, the report will provide a description of the concept of interactive television, according to the meaning given by the television industry and business area; moreover, it will illustrate the major aspects of the ongoing debate between a television oriented solution and a PC oriented solution. Secondly, the document will illustrate the most suitable business areas for interactive television applications, focusing on the role of natural language processing in the development of a real interactive television. The description of the latest developments in the sector will show how the implementation of natural language applications is, in itself, a significant step to create an interactive television system: a natural language processing application in the field of digital television “creates” interactive television or “makes” television interactive. The rapid growth of the market of digital tv, the hard worlwide competition between major television players and the search for marketing triggers, able to attract more and more users and increase revenues per subscriber, create conditions for the success of interactive applications based on natural language technology