title: A Tool to Simulate the Transmission, Reception, and Execution of Interactive TV Applications.
abstract: The emergence of Interactive Digital Television (iDTV) opened a set of technological possibilities that go beyond those offered by conventional TV. Among these opportunities we can highlight interactive contents that run together with linear TV program (television service where the viewer has to watch a scheduled TV program at the particular time it is offered and on the particular channel it is presented on). However, developing interactive contents for this new platform is not as straightforward as, for example, developing Internet applications. One of the options to make this development process easier and safer is to use an iDTV simulator. However, after having investigated some of the existing iDTV simulation environments, we have found a limitation: these simulators mainly present solutions focused on the TV receiver, whose interactive content must be loaded in advance by the programmer to a local repository (e.g., Hard Drive, USB). Therefore, in this paper, we propose a tool, named BiS (Broadcast iDTV content Simulator), which makes possible a broader solution for the simulation of interactive contents. It allows simulating the transmission of interactive content along with the linear TV program (simulating the transmission of content over the air and in broadcast to the receivers). To enable this, we defined a generic and easy-to-customize communication protocol that was implemented in the tool. The proposed environment differs from others because it allows simulating reception of both linear content and interactive content while running Java applications to allow such a content presentation.
authors.affiliation: Computer Science Department, Instituto Federal da Bahia (IFBA), Emidio dos Santos St., S/N, Barbalho, 40301-015 Salvador, BA, Brazil.
authors.forename: Manoel
authors.identifier: 0000-0003-4955-5886
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Carvalho Marques Neto
authors.affiliation: Informatic Center, R. dos Escoteiros, Universidade Federal da Paraíba (UFPB), s/n, Mangabeira, 58055-000 João Pessoa, PB, Brazil.
authors.forename: Raoni
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Kulesza
authors.affiliation: Computer Science Department, Instituto Federal da Bahia (IFBA), Emidio dos Santos St., S/N, Barbalho, 40301-015 Salvador, BA, Brazil.
authors.forename: Thiago
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Rodrigues
authors.affiliation: Computer Science Department, Instituto Federal da Bahia (IFBA), Emidio dos Santos St., S/N, Barbalho, 40301-015 Salvador, BA, Brazil.
authors.forename: Felipe A L
authors.initials: FA
authors.lastname: Machado
authors.affiliation: Computer Science Department, Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo (UFES), Fernando Ferrari Av. 514, Goiabeiras, 29075-910 Vitória, ES, Brazil.
authors.forename: Celso A S
authors.initials: CA
authors.lastname: Santos