The interactive time independent access to broadband multimedia information is not supported using today's networks and client systems. The idea of TV Anytime is based on the local caching of broadband media streams and allows in this way an interactive and time independent access to this information. The major objective of the UP-TV project is the development of basic technologies for scalable TV Anytime systems that implement personal TV services for business and consumer applications. The UP-TV project develops basic technologies on the one hand but also integrates two demonstrator applications and trials them in real-world environments.

Objectives:
UP-TV is an integrated research and development project developing basic technologies for TV Anytime systems and services. The research questions targeted in this project focus on the identification of media content that has to be recorded, the placement of those media assets onto single and networked media servers as well as the organisation of an efficient and comfortable access to these assets. The results of these research work influence the development of a TV Anytime server system that allows to support a scalable number of users, ranging from a cost-efficient consumer system to a large scale server system. Based on a general service platform, two application scenarios that integrate TV Anytime scenarios and web applications are implemented and tested. The application study personal TV in hotel environments and hierarchical wide area networks. The technical work in UP-TV is accompanied by preparation of business plans for the role out of personal TV services.

Work description:
The work within UP-TV is partitioned in four major tracks. There is work on basic research for relevant technologies for TV Anytime system, work on the development and integration of TV Anytime server and service platforms, as well as work on the development of two demonstrator application and the development of business scenarios for personal TV services.
Within the first major track, novel methods which are based on data mining, high performance computing, Agent technologies and combinatorial optimisation are used to develop a number of basic mechanisms for the identification of relevant media assets, their mapping onto single or networked TV Anytime servers as well as for intelligent methods for the access to the recorded media streams.
Using these results of basic research, a prototype of a scalable cost-efficient TV Anytime server system is developed. This server system is implemented as a cost-efficient consumer type system as well as a scalable server system allowing to support a large number of clients. The developed system allows to build up hierarchies of TV Anytime servers and takes up reference architectures of the TV Anytime Forum as well as generic APIs, e.g. Java TV API and ATVEF standards. It implements a general service framework and a number of additional service components that allow to implement targeted advertising, E-commerce applications and other services.
Using the integrated systems, two major trials are performed within UP-TV demonstrating the performance of the basic technologies developed here. The first trial provides personal TV within a hotel environment, while the second provides personal TV services in a hierarchical network integrating a large scale server system and consumer boxes installed in private homes.
The technical work will be accompanied by work on the preparation of business plans for the provision of TV Anytime services as well as on the discussion of legal aspects (content protection) for such services.

Milestones:
In month 6 the requirement study and technical specification of the TV cache system for the first development phase that lasts until month 14 is available. In month 12, the first version of the TV server system is integrated into a hotel environment. The final version of the TV Anytime server system is used in the final trial phase that integrates TV Anytime systems (large scale serves as well as consumer devices) in a hierarchical network of servers based on a bidirectional CATV network.