Efficient management of synchronised interactive services through the design of MCDP middleware

As the variety in network service platforms and end user devices grows rapidly, content providers must constantly adapt their production system to support these new technologies. A factor that highly complicates this process is the need for interactivity. In the Multimedia Content Distribution Platform (MCDP) project, an architecture for deploying highly interactive and synchronised television programs over a diverse collection of broadcast networks and end user devices was developed. It consists of a middleware platform with pluggable support for new broadcast networks and end-user devices. One of the main contributions is the preservation of the synchronisation between the interactive services and the multimedia broadcasts, defined once by the content provider and delivered to a multitude of endusers. The MCDP middleware is currently used as the main platform for the delivery of synchronised, interactive services in a IP Datacast system combining DVB-H and UMTS.