Real-time Multimedia and the Web: Interactive TV
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John F. Buford, GTE Laboratories, USA
Like a viewer of an interactive movie choosing a different plot line, the telecomm and computer industries are trying a new internet-based approach to residential interactive services that they hope will fulfill the ITV vision of the early 90s, when many of the same companies experimented with video on demand and consumer-oriented services. The ITV plans were stalled by economics and competition from the rapid growth of the Internet and Web, but now the computer and telecomm industries are coming together to promote Universal ADSL, a residential broadband service that would provide 25 times greater bandwidth than the fastest modems. Meanwhile, the key Internet protocols needed for real-time streaming media have been agreed to and products for streaming web servers are appearing. This talk will review the current trends and technologies for providing web delivery of real-time multimedia.
Dr. John Buford is a Staff Scientist at GTE Laboratories leading software architecture for distributed object systems. Previously he was an Associate Professor of Computer Science at the University of Massachusetts Lowell where he co-founded and directed the Distributed Multimedia Systems Lab. Dr. Buford has thirty-five publications including the book Multimedia Systems. He has given presentations on multimedia computing and web-based multimedia in more than ten countries.