PERSONAL TV GIVEN BOOST BY PHILIPS

PHILIPS Research and their partner Audio-Visual Indexing and Retrieval (AVIR)
have launched new equipment to enhance the application of Personal TV.
The new technologies enable automatic creation of a range of content descriptions for TV programmes using open standards MPEG-7and Digital Video Broadcasting Multimedia Home Platform (DVB-MHP)
Content descriptors are created in MPEG-7 format and transmitted along with the broadcast programme using either the same or a separate channel. Service providers are able to distribute an advanced electronic programming guide using the DVB-MHP protocol.
Audio-visual content descriptions gives service providers the option to include additional content information, on top of text data at the end of the broadcast chain.
The AVIR system can be used to browse and select features on Personal TV with automatic storage capabilities.
This system can detect scene changes by comparing the video content between subsequent frames. A scroll bar shows the different content of a programme over time, allowing viewers to quickly locate specific scenes. Speech recognition techniques generate keywords from news programmes, which can be used to locate specific items of interest to viewers.
AVIR is an ESPIRIT project sponsored by the EU.