The book shows how digital-interactive television (digiTV) will affect the relation between the broadcaster and the consumer. Standardization processes, technological paradigms, and application development issues will be discussed. The emerging applications, innovations, and future concepts are described in detail. The triangle: content - end-user - technology will be conceptualized to create a vision and to overview provision of services that will be major innovative elments in the world of digital television. From the technical side, eXtensible Markup Language (XML)-based metadata standards are a major element in realizing new innovative concepts in the world of digital, intereacive television. This book clearly shows by the introduction of applications and use-scenarios, which conceptual requirements and metadata models are applicable, which metadata subsets are applicable due to resource limitations, which metadata aspects are needed for non -linear content viewing, etc. The book gives a broad and detailed both visionary and technical overview useful for graduates, engineers, and scientists; and last but not least decision-makers in the broadcasting industry. USP: -Visionary 21