SUMMARY of the EUROPA project

EUROPA: End User Residential Open Platform Architecture

The objective of the project is to exploit the full possibilities that the interactive Digital TV (DTV) system can offer to all the players in its delivery chain from content provider up to an including the consumer. Most activities in this domain at the moment, however, are only targeted at the digitalization process of the analogue delivery chain. The digitalization of the total chain also allows for the exploitation of interactive (un)protected personalized content consumption next to the traditional sequential program content. It is the aim of the project to extend the functionality of the interactive DTV, in the context of a reference architecture, in the area of personalization, convenience, participation and communication thus allowing the exploitation of this new content concepts. The interoperability between the products of different providers requires an open common interface, reflected in standards.

The project aims to contribute to the development/extension of these standards. The core of the project limits itself to the architecture and functionality of the end-user terminal. The other elements of the delivery chain (service, server and delivery channel) will be addressed also in order to get to the requirements on one hand and to validate the results on the other hand. The project mainly addressed the ITEA competence extended multimedia as well as complex system engineering as all the developments have to take the resource constrained and robust nature of consumer electronics products into account.

The Consortium

Research institutes:
IMEC (B)
KUL (B)

Companies:
Thomson MultiMedia (F)
Bull (F)
Philips (NL)
Philips (F)
Philips (B)
CSELT (I)
ITALTEL (I)

The project has been closed. Website will not be maintained.