TV4U: full personalized TV

This paper proposes an innovative concept of a service that integrates a TV type of passive service and a Web type of active service. We have developed a prototype fully-personalized TV system called "TV4U" which has the following two features: (1) individual tailoring of TV programs (My Variety) allows the user to customize and enjoy their own tailored information variety programs, and (2) interaction with TV presenters (Seamless Interaction) allows the user to break into the running program and have a dialogue with the TV presenter directly to get more information. In the TV4U system, the TV set has a built-in computer to create personalized TV programs using real-time computer graphics (CG), voice synthesis and other multimedia functions. On the other hand, all the necessary information for automatically producing the TV programs is acquired from the Internet, PC and home server via the network connected to the TV set. We have built and tested a prototype of this TV4U system.