Cloud session maintenance to synchronise HbbTV applications and home network devices

Second screen services encourage TV audience to enjoy new forms of interaction engaging users around TV content as a main thread. This paper describes a standard-based solution for second screen services synchronised with the broadcast content. The user perceives an enhanced broadcast experience enriched with multimedia, textual and social Internet content through multiple devices. The presented end to end solution delegates to a server the cloud session maintenance in order to pair and synchronise HbbTV applications and HTML5- based second screen ones overcoming existing heterogeneous network interfaces barriers of current technological alternatives. The server decides dynamically the behaviour of the different applications regarding the user context, according to his preferences, device features and number of simultaneous views. It also manages the user interaction providing a full synchronised experience thanks to an event-driven mechanism on top of Websockets and AJAX. The paper analyses the performance of the proposed system evaluating the user interaction latency, the concurrency volume of the server and the interdependence, concluding this solution as a suitable approach for broadcast-related second screen services.