A system for the delivery of interactive television programming

Interactive television is a technology for delivering television programming on demand to households and businesses. Rather than passively choosing from a predetermined set of programs at scheduled times, the viewer can request programming to be delivered to him individually on demand. This paper describes a system being developed by IBM that is in active use at customer trials. The system supports movies on demand as well as more interactive applications such as home shopping. This system as deployed today on IBM's RS/6000 series of computers supports in the hundreds of viewers, but running on the SP-2 supercomputer and its follow-ons, the system can be scaled to support thousands of interactive viewers.