Platform-independent web-based iTV services through DVB-PCF transcoding

Abstract

Production and maintenance of interactive digital television (iTV) services can be a hard task due to the diversity of deployed digital television (DTV) platforms and the differences in terms of capabilities and functionalities between the receiver devices. The Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB) Portable Content Format (PCF) is a standard platform-independent service description which specifies the viewer experience in an iTV platform. It allows a unified authoring through a later transcoding to the final device. This paper proposes a workflow to produce and maintain platform-independent web-based iTV services from the application design level to the final deployed service through that standard. Moreover, this paper details the main characteristics of an implemented PCF to web-based platform transcoder, which can be applied to most IPTV and WebTV platforms.