FrameIDTV: A framework for developing interactive applications on digital television environments

Digital TV technologies are stretching out the horizons for interactive applications to end users. However, developing interactive applications for this new environment is not as straightforward as developing Internet applications. In order to make this development process easier in the context of interactive digital TV (iDTV), one of the solutions is the development of Frameworks. However, after investigating some of the existing iDTV framework solutions, we have found a limitation on the range of the interactive application domain to DTV available in these current frameworks, which mainly show solutions for local interactive (enhanced TV). Thus, in this paper, we propose an iDTV Framework (called FrameIDTV) that makes possible a broader solution in the DTV domain for the construction of interactive applications, both local and remote. The remote interactivity is possible using a generic and easy to customize communication protocol that is specified in the framework for the application layer. Furthermore, applications such as voting, home banking, and t-commerce, which are executed locally in the set-top box and are integrated to remote services using a return channel, can use the proposed framework. FrameIDTV also allows the establishment of secure communications and is developed following a specific framework methodology. This framework has primarily targeted the Brazilian Digital TV standard and its procedural middleware, called Ginga-J. Nevertheless, FrameIDTV can be broadly used worldwide, since it is compliant with the Globally Executable MHP (GEM) standard.