Broadcasting and personalization of user-generated contents in DVB-H mobile networks

During the last years, we have witnessed the boom of the digital market due to the proliferation of emergent audiovisual services and the increasing number of broadband networks. In this scenario, users insistently demand innovative services for exchanging and sharing their own audiovisual contents. In order to meet these needs, in this paper, we propose a system that broadcasts user-generated audiovisual contents for handheld devices in a mobile network based on the DVB-H broadcasting standard. Besides, our system offers diverse value-added services to these new active users, such as: (1) annotation, sharing and personalized distribution of audiovisual contents, (2) multi modal access, via Web or by client applications running locally in the handheld device, and (3) exploitation of return channels to transmit interactive contents that enhance the user’s experience. To achieve these goals, our system adopts well-known technologies for broadcasting and semantic annotation of audiovisual contents, as well as emergent technology from Web 2.0 and Semantic Web. We have carried out tests involving a group of students from the University of Vigo, who were satisfied with the personalization capabilities offered by our TV system for mobile settings.