This book collects selected research reports on the development of personalized services for Interactive TV. Drawing upon contributions from academia and industry that represent current research in the US, Europe and Asia, these articles represent leading research in personalized television.
TV viewers today are exposed to overwhelming amounts of information, and challenged by the plethora of interactive functionality provided by current set-top boxes. To ensure broad adoption of this technology by consumers, future Digital Television will have to take usability issues thoroughly into account. In particular, serious attention must be paid to facilitate the selection of content on an individual basis, and to provide easy-to-use interfaces that satisfy viewers' interaction requirements.
This volume collects selected research reports on the development of personalized services for Interactive TV. Drawing upon contributions from academia and industry in the US, Europe and Asia, this book represents a comprehensive picture of leading edge research in personalized television.
Given the heterogeneity of TV viewers, who di¡er e.g. in interests and skills, the provision of personalized services seems to be the only solution to address the information overload problem in an e¡ective manner. The User Modeling and the Intelligent User Interfaces communities have therefore focused on the following main lines of research:
- The provision of Electronic Program Guides recommending TV programs on an individual basis, to prevent users from ‘‘being lost in TV program space’’.
- Information retrieval tools to help users select interesting content in the cases where a prior categorization of the content is not possible (e.g., in news shows).
- The design and development of tools that help users explore large amounts of broadcast television content.
- The provision of adaptive interactive content that can be presented in a personalized way, depending on the viewer’s interests.
- The design of suitable user interfaces that enable TV viewers to perform advanced tasks in an intuitive and e⁄cient manner, which is essential for rendering Digital TV usable by any type of viewer, and not merely technical pundits.
