A PLATFORM BASED ON JAVA AND XML FOR

PROTOTYPING INTERACTIVE DIGITAL TELEVISION

PROGRAMS

Interactive Multimedia Systems and Human-Computer Interaction

João Benedito dos Santos Junior, Iran Calixto Abrão, Marcos Augusto Loiola, Paulo Muniz de Ávila

Hérick Marques and Bruno Tardiole Kuehne

Pontifical Catholic University of Minas Gerais – PUC Minas, Poços de Caldas – MG, Brazil

TVDILab – Interactive Digital Television Laboratory

André Bretas Nunes de Lima

TOTVS S.A. – Belo Horizonte – MG, Brazil

TOTVS TV – Platform for Innovation on Technology for Digital Television System

Keywords: Interactive Digital Television, Java, XML, Software Agents, Context-Awareness Systems.

Abstract: This work presents the JiTV (Java Interactive Television) as a proposal of an integrated development

platform that can be used for authoring of Digital Interactive Television Programs, discussing its

implementation aspects. Among the main requirements of the JiTV, we can put light on description of

scenarios using XML and the implementation of interaction controls using Java. In this scenario, the JiTV

platform supports the specification of context-awareness aspects, acquiring of contextual data from software

agents, building of data carroussel from the both recorded and real-time video and audio streams, tagging of

multimedia objects with XML schema, allowing also the information retrieval. Furthermore, context-

awareness aspects are being added for providing personalization in the television environment.

1 INTRODUCTION

With the dissemination of the technologies

associated to the interactive multimedia, new

applications and forms of interaction is appearing.

The different ways with that the viewer (as user in

traditional computing systems) can interact with a

multimedia application (or with multimedia objects)

demand the adaptation of the applications

(eventually of automatic form) to the determined

situations, with the objective to improve the

interaction in several levels. Moreover, the presence

of the computation in ubiquitous form offers the

viewer the expectation of that is possible to access

the information at anytime and anywhere, what to

introduce the context-awareness aspects in the

computational systems (Santos Jr. et al, 2001).

One of the most promising technologies of

interactive video – the Interactive Digital Television

– has as one of its objectives to provide new

interaction ways to the viewer, like is the case of

non-linear navigation as occurred on the Internet

browsing. One of the main advantages of the advent

of the Interactive Digital Television, especially in

the brazilian context, is the possibility of the

increase of the interaction between the viewer and

the access terminal (like television) through services

and applications, like games, video-on-demand, t-

commerce, Internet browsing, among others (Peng,

2002; Santos Jr. et al, 2005). However, due to be a

new technology, having few established standards

and too many researches in progress, the building of

applications for Digital Television still is challenge,

especially for the persons that have interest on

television systems, but do not dominate technologies

and software tools for building these applications. In

245

Benedito dos Santos Junior J., Calixto Abrão I., Augusto Loiola M., Muniz de Ávila P., Marques H., Tardiole Kuehne B. and Bretas Nunes de Lima A.

(2007).

A PLATFORM BASED ON JAVA AND XML FOR PROTOTYPING INTERACTIVE DIGITAL TELEVISION PROGRAMS - Interactive Multimedia Systems

and Human-Computer Interaction.

In Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems - HCI, pages 245-252

DOI: 10.5220/0002401402450252

 SciTePress

this direction, concepts and technologies applied to

the traditional computing systems can be also

applied to the interactive television systems, but is

relevant to consider specific aspects of this new

environment, especially in terms of the expectations

of interaction of the viewer (HAVI, 2000).

In this context, this work presents the JiTV

platform (Java Interactive Television), which is

under development in the Interactive Digital

Television Laboratory at PUC Minas (Santos Jr. et

al, 2001; Santos Jr. et al, 2005), providing the

validation of requirements to the Brazilian

Terrestrial Digital Television System (SBTVD-T)

(Lemos, 2005). The JiTV environment allows the

development of applications for Interactive Digital

Television through a set of authoring tools,

distribution mechanisms and

presentation/interaction players. To the author, it is

enough to define the components of the television

program (media objects, timeline control,

information elements, interaction procedures); so,

the JiTV Studio generates an XML schema that

represents the television program (Lemos, 2005).

From this XML schema, another JiTV component

(JiTV Streamer) builds the data carroussel (program

description, audio/video streams and interaction

schema) and sends it to the communication infra-

structure (Batista et al, 2005). In the viewer side,

using a kind of set-top box (STB), the television

program (audio, video and data) is presented to the

viewer via access terminal, which contains a JiTV

Player (Sun, 2005; Harren et al, 2004).

2 TELEVISION PROGRAMS

The current stage of the development of interactive

television applications, in world-wide level, is

focused on the increasing of some aspects of

interaction to the traditional television programs

(enhanced television) (ATSC, 2001; ISDB, 2001;

DVB, 2002). However, this work proposes a new

model of interactive television program that

considers new interaction criteria as a part of the

program, instead of to add new interaction criteria to

the program (enhanced television).

In the Figure 1 a television program (and its

multiple objects) is presented. It is focused on case

of the several forms to present the program to the

viewer, depending on the available viewer's profiles.

Figure 1: Proposed Structure for a Television Program in a

Television System.

This kind of architecture is common to the video-

on-demand applications; however, new interaction

criteria are not fundamentally important

(personalization is important).

2.1 Interactive Programs

In this proposal, the interactive program is the

central element of an interactive television system.

The interactive program can be defined as the set of

all the medias (and its descriptions), scenes (and its

descriptions), a summary (or synopsis) and its

programming, as it shows the Figure 2.

Figure 2: Entities that compose an interactive television

program.

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As cited, in this proposal, the interactive program

is structured using XML schema. The entities

Schedule and Summary are defined based on TV

Anytime Forum (TVA, 2001). A simplified version

of the description schema of a scene is presented in

Figure 3; details of the description of scenes and

programs were defined in the proposed complete

model (Santos Jr. et al, 2001).

From the media objects and its descriptions, it is

possible to build different interfaces or ways of

presentation of the interactive program to the

viewer. This possibility is named profile in this

proposal. For the coding of the both media and the

scenes, this proposal considers the use of MPEG

technology (MPEG-2 and MPEG-4), which is

sufficiently flexible and efficient for the

compressing of video and audio. Besides that,

MPEG-4 standard allows the representation of

media elements as objects (OMG model), what is

important to apply new interaction criteria in each

one these objects (Chiariglione, 2001). This

characteristic is sufficiently significant for the case

of the implementation of different profiles for an

interactive television program. It is important to

highlight that this work considers the use of MPEG

technologies for the coding, transmission and

presentation of the interactive television program,

independent of the transport mechanism, being able

to use different standards of the Digital Television,

like is the case of Multimedia Home Platform

(MHP) for the presentation of the multimedia

content (ATSC, 2001; ISDB, 2001; DVB, 2002).

<attribute name="type"

type="mpeg7:DSType"/>

<attribute name="id"

type="string"/>

<attribute name="filelocation"

type="mpeg7:DSType"/>

</complexType >

</element >

</complexType >

</element >

Figure 3: XML Schema for description of a scene.

This work uses XML schema for the description

of television program data (scenes and media),

allowing the creation of tools for searching in

multimedia content.

On the other hand, the summary and schedule

have fundamental importance for some applications,

like EPG (Electronic Program Guide), once that is

using the EPG that the viewer chooses operations

(live viewing or recorder, by example) and interacts

with the programming. Another excellent use of

schedule is to allow the automatic adaptation of the

programs to the viewer interests, using contextual

information (where, when, what, who and how).

2.2 The Profile

The broadcaster manages the viewer's profile. In the

player tool, the viewer has access to JiTV Profile,

which is an assistant tool for managing the profile

data. In the broadcaster studio, JiTV Studio offers a

set of tools for crossing of the programming data and

viewer profile data, generating several levels and

categories of viewers (for example, the table of

interactive channels that one viewer can be access).

For the description of the profiles, this work also

uses XML schema for describing program elements,

layout, context, profile and

interaction, as is showed in the Figure 4.

The information relative to the

profile is

inside of an element

<profile>. This element is

composed by other elements, which have been

defined in the complete proposed model (Santos Jr.

et al, 2001). For space reasons, only some these

elements will be described in the following.

Figure 4: Entities that compose an interactive program into

television system.

The defined aspects of presentation, which are

part of the element

<Layout>, are relative to the

colors of deep, of the sources and position of the

medias. Inside of the layout still, one has the

possible controls of media for one determined

profile, the type of menu and its content. A

simplified version of the Schema of description of

the element

<layout> is presented in Figure 5.

Details of the projects of description of profiles are

found in complete model of this proposal (Santos Jr.

A PLATFORM BASED ON JAVA AND XML FOR PROTOTYPING INTERACTIVE DIGITAL TELEVISION

PROGRAMS - Interactive Multimedia Systems and Human-Computer Interaction

247

et al, 2001), in terms of an instance of interactive

application, in the case the interactive television.

<attribute name="bgcolor"

type="string"/>

<attribute name="id"

type="string"/>

</element >

</element >

</complexType >

</element >

</element >

</element >

</complexType >

</element >

Figure 5: Description Schema of the Layout element.

The communication infrastructure requirements

of one profile are specified into element

<Communication>, where communications

requirements are stored for each media object,

decoders and access terminals (like STB). In Figure

6, is presented a simplified version of the XML

description schema of the

element.

<attribute name="medianame"

type="string"/>

<restriction base =

”to nonNegativeInteger”>

</restriction>

</simpleType >

</element >

<element name =”Codec”

type =”string”/>

</complexType>

</element>

</complexType>

</element >

Figure 6: Description schema of the Communication

element.

Inside of the element

<Context>, are inserted

all context information, which can excellent form to

determinate one profile. This element was defined

from context-awareness aspects, such as

<who>,

<where>, <when>, <what> and <how> (Dey and

Abowd, 2000). This element has the actions that

must be carried under specific situations. In Figure

7, an example is presented of the

element.

<who =”mr. 1“> action 1</who>

openProgram(news1)

</when>

openProgram(news2)

</where>

openProgram(music1)

</who>

<what =”24:00“> turnoff() </what>

</Context>

Figure 7: Description schema of the Context element.

The last element showed here is <Interaction>,

in which will be all the actions that must be carried

when each interaction defined for a profile occurs.

These interactions are described in Figure 8.

<attribute name="media"

type="pratic:Media"/>

<attribute name="button"

type="pratic:Button"/>

<attribute name="action"

type="string"/>

</complexType >

</element >

Figure 8: Description schema of the Interaction

element.

In the example of the Figure 9, the attribute

”moves” is a XML description; the attribute

video3 was presented in the television program and

described in XML and the action

moveMedia(video3) represents a command that

will be performed by the STB as a task (this

command depends on the both operating system

embedded to STB and middleware/applications that

supported, such as MHP or JavaTV (Sun, 2005).

<on =”moves” measured =”video3”

action =”moveMedia(video3)”>

<on =”click” button =”volume”

action =”openVolumeBox()”>

</Interaction >

Figure 9: Description schema of attributes of the

Interaction element.

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With the presented elements and using the XML

descriptions, an ample set of singular characteristics

can be specified, allowing several personalization

levels into interactive television program/system.

3 BUILDING PROGRAMS

Initially, the use of profiles allows better adaptation

of interactive programs to the viewer. The Figure 10

presents a UML sequence diagram, which shows the

essential functionality of the actions the are

performed between actors of the system (sender,

STB, viewer).

As showed in the Figure 10, the sequence of

events has beginning when the viewer (user actor)

decides which interactive program will go to attend;

chosen the program, STB (STB actor) requests the

delivery (sender actor) of the authorized profiles;

then, these profiles are sent to the STB, which

presents the options to the viewer; the viewer

chooses the profile then the STB makes the calling

to the sender; in this solicitation is requested the

audio/video streams and XML metadata for the

desired program.

Figure 10: UML Sequence Diagram for the entities of an

interactive program.

In this kind of environment, software agents can

provide contextual information to the STB,

enhancing the capabilities of the profile. Thus, the

STB can use this information, described in the

element

<Context>, for the automatic adaptation of

the interactive program to the viewer interests

(profile).

In this scenario, one interactive program can

manipulate several profiles. In the scope of this

research, context-awareness aspects and ubiquitous

computing have been strongly investigated.

4 JITV PLATFORM

To provide a platform for authoring of interactive

programs, distribution of streams and interaction on

the player, is required knowledge that a television

system is more than television as access terminal

simply, due to the fact that multiple devices (mobile

phones, palms, PDA, among others) can be used to

access to the digital television system. In this

direction, this platform must be composed by

authoring tools, streaming tools and player tools

(Santos Jr. et al, 2005).

Since 2003, when this research was started as a

part of the Brazilian Terrestrial Digital Television

System (SBTVD-T), the platform has been named

JiTV (Java Interactive Television), especially in

terms of the use of the both Java and XML

technologies. The Figure 11 showed the JiTV

Platform.

Figure 11: Architecture of the JiTV Platform.

A set of streaming tools must allow to the

broadcaster to define ways for distribution of

interactive programs and delivering of this program

Net

Agents

A PLATFORM BASED ON JAVA AND XML FOR PROTOTYPING INTERACTIVE DIGITAL TELEVISION

PROGRAMS - Interactive Multimedia Systems and Human-Computer Interaction

249

to the viewer. These tools must allow the managing

of data carroussel, which includes audio, video and

metadata. Mechanisms for coding and decoding of

media objects must to be also included into

streaming tools. In another side, a set of authoring

tools must allow to the author

(producer/broadcaster) to define the interactive

program elements and the way that this program will

be streamed to the viewer, including also the choose

of viewer's profiles and interaction schema.

A set of player tools must allow to the viewer to

interact with the interactive television program. A

multimedia player must to present media objects in

the screen (video and images) and in the speaker

sound device (audio). Furthermore, in the context of

JiTV Platform, the player has been implemented for

multiple devices, allowing the receiving of

interactive television programs also in mobile

devices (like mobile phones, palms, PDA, among

others).

4.1 JiTV Tools

As presented, the JiTV platform consists on three

distinct sets of tools: 1) set of tools for authoring of

interactive television programs; 2) set of tools for

streaming (broadcasting) of interactive television

programs; 3) set of tools for playing of interactive

television programs.

The JiTV platform is based-on Java and XML

technologies; all tools are enough to

read/write/process XML schema, which have been

defined in the SBTVD-T context. In the Figure 11,

the relationship between these sets of tools is

presented.

In terms of the set of tools for authoring, the

follow practices have been developed:

1. JiTVStudio: central tool for authoring of

interactive television programs;

2. JiTVTagger: tool for tagging of media

objects for searching;

3. JiTVAgent: tool for specifying agent’s

behavior into digital television system;

4. JiTVSearcher: tool for searching in

interactive programs for finding elements

and components;

5. JiTVStreamer: tool for integrating

streaming functionalities during the

building of interactive television programs.

For streaming (broadcasting) of interactive

programs, the follow practices have been developed:

1. JiTVDataCarroussel: tool that allow

the building of data carroussel and its

streaming in communication infrastructure.

For presentation and interaction, the follow

practices have been developed:

1. JiTVPlayer: a multi-device player tool

for presenting multimedia objects (audio,

video and data) and to allow the viewer

interaction;

2. JiTVEPG: a tool for presenting the

Electronic Program Guide;

3. JiTVQuiz: a tool that contains an

interactive application for voting and

entertainment;

4. JiTVMail: a tool for sending/receiving

text messages using e-mail service;

5. JiTVApp: framework that supports the

presentation and running applications and

services (Internet Browser, RSS service,

mail service, among others).

The Figure 12a presents the interface of the

player tool using the television access terminal,

showing four channels of standard television; in the

Figure 12b, a selected channel is presented.

Figure 12a: Interface of the JiTVPlayer tool with multiple

programming channels for choosing.

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Figure 12b: Interface of the JiTVPlayer tool with selected

channel in viewing.

In this player, it is possible to control the

presentation of live/recorded audio and video,

starting resident/broadcasted applications and to

access return channel for interaction. The Figure 13

presents the same player in a mobile device.

Figure 13: Interface of the JiTVMobilePlayer Emulator for

viewing the television program.

The Figure 14a presents the list of applications

that can be selected/performed by the viewer. This

list is showed from XML schema, which describes

the essential parameters for running each

application. In conceptual terms, each application

can be resident or downloaded from broadcaster

application central. In the Figure 14b is showed the

JiTVMail application as a communication service to

the viewer.

Figure 14a: Interface of the JiTVApp Framework showing

the application list.

Figure 14b: Interface of the JiTVApp Framework showing

the JiTVMail service.

5 CONCLUSIONS

This work has presented the JiTV as a platform for

prototyping of interactive digital television programs

in the context of Brazilian Terrestrial Digital

Television System (SBTVD-T).

The one of the most promising technologies of

interactive video, the Interactive Digital Television

has as one of its main objectives to allow high levels

of interaction between the viewer and the interactive

programs that are presented to him. From the point

of view of the development technologies for

interactive television, Java and XML blunt as good

solutions contained into main international

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standards/systems for digital television (ATSC,

DVB, ISDB).

This work presented aspects of the modeling and

implementation of the JiTV platform, discussing

aspects of the prototyping of interactive television

programs and applications. It is important to cite that

several programs and applications are being

developed in the SBTVD-T scenarios, in partnership

with the TV Alterosa (broadcaster), TV Globo

(broadcaster) and TOTVS (Software Solutions

Company). In these tests, the both middleware

requirements of SBTVD-T and JiTV functionalities

are being validated and the results will be reported in

future works.

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