Semi-Automated Mobile TV Service Generation
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> IEEE Transactions on Broadcasting < 1 Semi-automated Mobile TV Service Generation Dr Moxian Liu, Member, IEEE, Dr Emmanuel Tsekleves, Member, IEEE, and Prof. John P. Cosmas, Senior Member, IEEE environments from both hardware and software perspectives. The development results on the hardware environment and Abstract—Mobile Digital TV (MDTV), the hybrid of Digital lower layer protocols are promising with reliable solutions Television (DTV) and mobile devices (such as mobile phones), has (broadcast networks such as DVB-H and mobile convergence introduced a new way for people to watch DTV and has brought networks such as 3G) being formed. However the new opportunities for development in the DTV industry. implementation of higher layer components is running Nowadays, the development of the next generation MDTV service relatively behind with several fundamental technologies has progressed in terms of both hardware layers and software, (specifications, protocols, middleware and software) still being with interactive services/applications becoming one of the future MDTV service trends. However, current MDTV interactive under development. services still lack in terms of attracting the consumers and the The vast majority of current commercial MDTV service service creation and implementation process relies too much on applications include free-to-air, Pay Television (PayTV) and commercial solutions, resulting in most parts of the process being Video-on-Demand (VoD) services. When contrasted with the proprietary. In addition, this has increased the technical demands various service types of conventional DTV, MDTV services for developers as well as has increased substantially the cost of are still unidirectional, offering basic services that lack in producing and maintaining MDTV services. In light of the attracting large numbers of subscribers. Services with more aforementioned situation, this paper proposes an innovative interactive features found on DTV systems (such as multiplayer MDTV service creation and consumption system based on gaming, voting, and online betting, etc.) are required by users XHTML and Java ME. On the head-end it introduces a on the MDTV platform too. Therefore under the provision of semi-automatic creation mechanism to facilitate a less technical and more efficient interactive service creation process. This mobile telecommunication network as the interaction channel, enables designers and creative individuals to be actively involved discussions and attempts at introducing interactive-rich in the MDTV service creation process and to develop services into the MDTV domain have been ongoing. However, interactive-rich MDTV service. On the client-end it employs an various proprietary commercial solutions dominate the current open-source software environment as the interactive service interactive service generation and implementation field. This MDTV consumption platform, rendering the MDTV service has resulted in a plethora of fragmented proprietary implementation process as less proprietary as possible. Initial middleware/software specifications. The lack of a universal or tests indicate that the proposed solution allows for a faster and an open-standard solution constitutes one of the current issues more effective MDTV interactive service generation. limiting the speed of evolution and richness of MDTV services, especially in terms of the deployment of interactive applications [1]. I. INTRODUCTION This paper presents a novel solution for the creation of odern Digital TV (DTV) systems broadcast not only interactive MDTV services and applications, with a twofold Mtraditional Television (TV) content but also provide aim. Firstly to introduce open-standard technologies in the viewers with a series of interactive TV services. Following the service creation process, in order to improve the compatibility dramatic increase in the use of personal mobile devices such as of MDTV services with different bearer standards; and mobile phones, PDAs (Personal Digital Assistants), notebooks secondly to reduce the technical demand on the service creation and netbooks, DTV has today been realized and ported in the process, allowing designers to be actively engaged in the mobile environment creating the advent of Mobile Digital TV service creation process. The paper is divided into five sections. (MDTV). Section I provides a brief overview of the MDTV service The majority of current MDTV related research work and development. Section II provides an insight into various service commercial solutions mainly focus on shifting existing DTV generation solutions in the current MDTV industry and services to MDTV, even though the characteristics between research field. Section III presents the proposed solution DTV and MDTV systems vary considerably. More precisely, including its adopted technologies, assistant software tool, the research has been conducted in recent years on constructing the data flow throughout the service generation process and a series MDTV service distribution (broadcasting) and reception of comparisons with other solutions. The initial test results and a discussion of the proposed solution are provided in Section Manuscript submitted March 31st, 2011. IV. Lastly, section V presents the future work and the M. Liu, E. Tsekleves, and J. P. Cosmas are with Brunel University, London conclusions. UB8 3PH, U.K. (e-mail: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], Telephone No.: 01895-267379, 01895-266756). > IEEE Transactions on Broadcasting < 2 II. MOBILE DIGITAL TV SERVICE GENERATION services, by using a number of appropriate service authoring tools. These are then distributed to the end-user with the help of A. MDTV service generation and implementation process the BNO. In addition to this, the MSP is responsible for setting The mobile version of DTV, MDTV shares similar service up the server-side content for the MDTV services it provides generation and implementation process with it. A typical and cooperates with the CPs to actualize the implementation process chain is illustrated in Fig 1, where there are five key solutions for the interactive applications. The TDM has to entities: the Content Provider (CP), the MDTV Service follow the agreement and provide users with the MDTV Provider (MSP), the Broadcast Network Operator (BNO), the terminal devices that are able to meet the MDTV service Cellular Network Operator (CNO), and the Terminal Device requirements within the chain; such as capable of receiving Manufacturer (TDM). The BNO and the CNO are the bearer services from BNO, capable of retrieving the services provided network providers. The BNO provides the broadcasting by MSP, capable of running any interactive applications by network resource for the service distribution whilst the CNO cooperating with the CNO and MSP. provides the interaction channel for the service consumption When a MDTV service is generated by the CP and MSP and [3][4]. then distributed by the BNO, the user (consumer) can start consuming the service on the MDTV terminal device produced by the TDM. The consumer has the option of either watching the produced MDTV content or interacting with the interactive components of the service. Such interactions are accomplished through the interaction channel provided by the CNO, where the consumer requests (such as a VoD command) are sent from the device to the server and the server processes and responds to them. B. Current service generation overview Based on the aforementioned typical service generation and implementation chain, the relevant commercial entities can successfully deploy their MDTV services in the current market. Fig 1: Typical MDTV service implementation process chain With regards to service generation, there are mainly two different solutions being adopted, namely the standard-based The key component in the chain is the MDTV service solution and the commercial solution. The difference between application layer agreement. This agreement usually consists of these emanates from the discrepancies in their corresponding the MDTV middleware specification definitions such as the service application layer agreement. service content (audio, video, and other auxiliary data) formats, service application model, application execution platform, 1) Standard-based generation solution application signaling, transport protocols, graphics model and There are MDTV service generation solutions that apply the security mechanism. Based on the bearer MDTV network middleware and software specifications of their bearer network standard, the agreement is arranged either according to the standards as the service application layer agreement. These pre-defined middleware/software specification of the network solutions are defined here as the “standard-based generation standard or through a series of development work conducted by solutions”. In practice, this type of service generation solution the relevant commercial entities. The CP, MSP and TDM take is usually preferred by ATSC-M/H, ISDB-T 1seg, DMB or 3G this agreement as the reference during their work within the network based MDTV service implementations since all these chain. For instance in a DVB-H based MDTV service standards have their own middleware or software specifications implementation, the bearer network standard is DVB-H and such as the ATSC-M/H Application Framework[23], thus the application layer agreement will employ DVB-IPDC ISDB-BML[24], DMB-MATE[25][26], 3GPP-DIMS[27] and as the basis since it defines most