SMPTE-HKG section organized an ITV (interactive television) seminar titled: “Interactive TV- A world Perspective” in Hong Kong. The ITV technical seminar was co-organized by IVE Shatin (Hong Kong Institute of Vocational Education) and supported by Unisoft Corporation from USA. Miss Audrey Ruelas (Director) and Mr. Guy Hadland (Chief Technology Officer) from Unisoft shared with the audience their experience of on interactive TV by brief description of a number of iTV applications, which are currently deployed worldwide. A brief summary of the current iTV middleware standards was also presented, including some details on DVB’s Multimedia Home Platform (MHP), the US cable industry’s OpenCable Application Profile (OCAP) and a new standard Enhanced TV (ETV) which was recently introduced in the United States to support legacy set-top-boxes. In addition, the requirements for encoding and transmission of MHP and OCAP applications in a cable or satellite station were discussed. The final part of the presentation was a simulated demonstration of TSBroadcaster product to illustrate some of the principles and concepts presented in the seminar where TSBroadcaster was the encoder and streamer, which supported MHP, OCAP and ETV applications.
 
The technical seminar was conducted in IVE Shatin’s lecture theatre and about 50 television broadcasters, system integrators, end users, lecturers, and representatives of production and post production houses attended the seminar and they appreciated the technical information presented.