Chapter 4. iTV Receivers

Chapter Objectives

• Present technologies integrated in receivers

• Describe architecture components

• Present issues to be addressed

• Discuss related standards

iTV receivers can be regarded as a meeting point of services delivered by multiple providers to which viewers can subscribe. The data from which these services are made is flowing into the receiver through both MPEG-based Digital TV broadcast(s) and IP-based return channel(s). Once iTV content data is received, numerous application layer technologies are used to process the data and launch the application.

This chapter is intended to serve as an introductory overview rather than a complete reference. It reviews expectations from receivers, some of the transport processing internals, and application processing internals. Hardware block diagrams are presented, as well as protocols and software stacks.