Novel use of DTV Capabilities Results in First Interactive Weather Channel
Reprinted from a Triveni Digital press release:
(Princeton Junction, NJ) Jan. 10, 2002 - NJN Public Television and Radio (NJN), Zenith Electronics Corporation, AccuWeather, and Triveni Digital showcased the first ever interactive weather channel using the terrestrial digital television spectrum and requiring no back channel for requesting the content. Capitalizing on the flexibility of the ATSC Digital Television (DTV) standard, this compelling new DTV application demonstrates AccuWeather’s customized, highly localized weather data services, NJN’s digital television infrastructure, Zenith digital set-top boxes (STBs), and the technologies and development capability of Triveni Digital.
The solution uses an innovative architecture by which the AccuWeather data is formatted into a presentation form by Triveni Digital and then embedded within the NJN digital television signal using Triveni Digital’s SkyScraper datacasting platform for reception by the specially-designed Zenith STBs throughout the State of New Jersey. This architecture permits rich weather content to be sent to large numbers of receiving devices at the same time. This allows each viewer to interact with the received content individually, while not requiring any type of back channel to a central server.
This innovative digital television application uses the Advanced Television Enhancement Forum (ATVEF) Transport B specification for sending interactive TV data over the DTV spectrum. The data is stored in the STB memory and is available for interactive retrieval using the viewer’s remote control. The viewer can bring up various screens of weather information related to local New Jersey and other selected cities in the menu. Compared to other means of accessing weather data, TV-based interactive weather information is compelling in that it provides immediate access over TV while being easy to use with frequent updates. Taking advantage of the flexible 19.4 megabit-per-second broadband pipeline that the ATSC DTV standard provides, NJN plans to expand the portal offering to include local traffic, news, and other innovative local channels from Triveni Digital.