Objective
Main Objective
The main objective of CustomTV is to develop, demonstrate and validate the technology for user-friendly screen customisation and interactive programme selection in a multimedia broadcast environment by introducing the multimedia elements of the MPEG-4 standard and the object description of the MPEG-7 standard into existing Digital Visual Broadcasting (DVB) services. This system will demonstrate the compatible co-existence of MPEG-2 with MPEG-4 and MPEG-7, thus helping to contribute to faster acceptance of these new standards.
Technical Approach
CustomTV will rely on existing technology. The demonstrator will be built using mostly commercial products (MPEG-2) and technologies developed by a number of ACTS projects implementing MPEG-4; such as the MoMuSys terminal and the German MINT project's implementation of MPEG-4 video decoding on the 320C6x DSP on a parallel pentium PC platform. To provide more than one image sequence within the transport multiplex stream, an MPEG-2 commercial system and an MPEG-4 customised system will be used to encode and decode the real-time video, audio and data elements. Considerable effort will be devoted to software development of program interaction and composition. The new MPEG-7 technology will enable the selection of one or more information streams from a multiplex containing many such streams and, together with the MPEG-4 compositor, offer a means of flexibly presenting this information on screen. Since MPEG-7 information streams will have descriptive tags associated with each information stream, content-based access of distributed information can be achieved where the user can selectively access the information according to a set of pre-selected key words or other search criteria. A user profile will be built to offer viewing suggestions on request. The work will be performed in collaboration with international standardisation bodies, in particular MPEG-7, MPEG-4, FIPA, DVB, DAVIC and others.
Summary of Trial
A real-time demonstrator system, based on multimedia DSP technology, will be built with a CCIR-601 resolution screen that is able to present CIF sub-images, text streams, JPEG still images and GIF graphic images. It will be based on existing MPEG-2 multiplexor technology to carry MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 streams and enhanced with MPEG-7 data. The CustomTV demonstrator will be used to show the formation of 'live' (MPEG-2) and 'recorded' (MPEG-4) broadcast multimedia material, enhanced with MPEG-7 information (indexed manually and semi-automatically) and broadcasting to the viewer site. At the receiving end the selection based on searching the required multimedia material using MPEG-7 will be demonstrated. Also interactive screen configuration will be shown. The project plans to demonstrate MPEG-4 broadcasting with MPEG-7 indexing via satellite at IBC'99 (incorporated in the DVB-S MPEG-2 transport stream in compatible form). This demonstration will include the customisation of the display screen. The project also intends to test CustomTV solutions in networks other than satellite such as ATM and DVB-T, which will be made available by the project partners.
Expected Achievements
CustomTV will demonstrate novel methods of multimedia information dissemination and access, hence creating new service providers and a new channel for multimedia information broadcasting to complement existing ones. CustomTV will have immense implications for the future of TV/PC industries as a consumer product to enhance today's television sets and services. The project should form the European core of MPEG-7 standardisation with respect to broadcasting aspects. For this purpose, it will coordinate with other ACTS projects dealing with contributions to MPEG-7 such as DICEMAN (MPEG-7 in archiving) and STORit (encapsulation of metadata).
Expected Impact
The impact and exploitation of the CustomTV results will be in several activity areas (all represented in the consortium). CustomTV is led by the R&D Centre of leading media content providers/broadcasters and comprises an original equipment manufacturer as well as service providers, broadcasters and renown multimedia institutions. CustomTV will contribute to the international standardisation efforts by providing an important demonstration for the use of MPEG-4 for novel multi-media services, experience in co-existence and migration from MPEG-2 towards MPEG-4 and MPEG-7, and contribute to the developing MPEG-7 standard.
CustomTV will also impact the broadcast industry and content providers. It will provide an important demonstration of the use of MPEG-4 multimedia transmission using DAB/DVB channels. Considering the large number of channels and vast amounts of information available, the incorporation of MPEG-7 for increased functionalities and increased local user interaction will be very attractive.
Main contributions to the programme objectives:
Main deliverables
Demonstration of added value services by compatible insertion of both MPEG4 multimedia elements and MPEG7 data into DVB transmissions.
Contribution to the programme
CustomTV made important contribution to showing broadcasters that MPEG4 and MPEG7 are really worth using for creating added-value services in a standardised way. Standards contributions to MPEG-7 and relations to DVB concerning broadcast profiles.
Key Issues
Unlike the present TV, which only allows the selection of a TV programme with its associated sound(s) and data services (like subtitles or teletext), CustomTV will enable users to access multiple-information and multimedia sources simultaneously. It will also provide novel and immediate methods for viewing information sources; for instance, advertising, stock exchange, news as well as normal TV channels. CustomTV focuses on satisfying user requirements to have access to multiple, concurrent information sources and provides customised use of the TV/PC screen layout to suit individual requirements. CustomTV will provide tools for media content providers to define events and objects to assist selection at the consumer end.
The technology applied to CustomTV will demonstrate the evolutionary path from MPEG-2 to MPEG-4 and MPEG-7, within an MPEG-2 multiplexor system, for broadcast services. It is expected that this will encourage broadcasters to provide new services based on MPEG-4, alongside existing MPEG-2 channels. CustomTV will demonstrate how multimedia services can be integrated into broadcast environments to create new forms of information dissemination and related services and assist the TV/PC industry to develop new generations of TV/PC sets to satisfy the customised model of TV viewing.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
- engineering and technologymechanical engineeringvehicle engineeringaerospace engineeringsatellite technology
- natural sciencescomputer and information sciencessoftwaresoftware development
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Topic(s)
Call for proposal
Data not availableFunding Scheme
CSC - Cost-sharing contractsCoordinator
80939 München
Germany