Intelligent Media Agents

1 Introduction.- 1.1 Research in Interactive Television Systems.- 1.2 Applications.- 1.3 The Problem of an Information Glut.- 1.4 Need for Agent-based Systems.- 1.5 Overview.- 2 Towards Personal Television Systems.- 2.1 Software Agent Definition.- 2.2 Related Work.- 2.3 Practical Issues and Examples.- 2.4 Intelligent Agent Research Applied to Television.- 3 Requirements.- 3.1 Requirements to Multimedia Environments.- 3.2 Requirements to Program Provision.- 3.3 Requirements to User-Specific Functions.- 3.4 Conclusion.- 4 Agent Run-Time Environment.- 4.1 System Standards.- 4.2 Multimedia Standards.- 4.3 Dynamic Generation of Multimedia Applications.- 5 Architecture of the Intelligent Media Agent.- 5.1 Multilayered Agent Approach.- 5.2 Module Description.- 5.3 Discussion of Privacy and Security Aspects.- 6 Program Descriptors and User Profiles.- 6.1 Classification Units.- 6.2 Program Descriptors.- 6.3 User Profile.- 6.4 Attribute Types.- 7 Matching and Clustering.- 7.1 Matching Methods.- 7.2 Application to Attribute Types.- 7.3 Matching Example.- 7.4 Clustering.- 8 Profile Initialization and Update.- 8.1 User Profiles Initialization.- 8.2 User Profile Reference Table.- 8.3 User Profile Updates.- 8.4 User Groups.- 9 Decision Support System.- 9.1 Characteristic Properties.- 9.2 User Behavior Variables.- 9.3 Reaction to Zapping.- 10 Implementation and Testing.- 10.1 Implementation based on the MHEG Standard.- 10.2 Implementation of the Electronic Program Guide Application.- 10.3 Evaluation with Respect to Requirements.- 10.4 Summary.- 11 Conclusions.- 11.1 Classification.- 11.2 Suggested Extensions.- Appendix A: Genre Trees.- Appendix B: Personal EPG Application based on JAVA.- Appendix C: The Administration Tool.- Appendix D: Sample Hit List.