| Abstract | Digital Television (DTV) was the first major advance in the television industry
since the establishment of color TV sets in the 50’s. However, despite the
ambitious anticipations, most DTV operators offering subscriber TV services
are facing serious economic problems. Many believe that significantly
increasing the DTV operator revenues is closely linked to the provision of
advanced interactive TV applications which, on one-hand, based on content
enhancements will attract more subscribers, and on the other hand will also
generate indirect revenues through services like TV-commerce or on-line
betting. In this paper an end-to-end interactive TV application is presented.
The application has been developed for accompanying sport broadcasts, given
that sports content is very attractive for the majority of subscribers. This
application enhances sport broadcasts with relevant content (statistics, news,
information) appearing on user-demand, as well as with an innovative
interactive entertaining game of predictions challenging users to make
predictions and to prove their anticipatory skills and sport knowledge. The
application supports multiple types of forward and return channels and STB
middleware systems. Furthermore, its components can be used in content
distribution networks targeting multiple network-enabled information
appliances
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