Transmission and reception of television programmes and other data which enables an armchair shopper to be performed with a little modification to existing equipment for receiving television programmes

摘要

In a digital television system, a receiver/decoder (or "set-top-box") can download one of more of several applications that can be run by the receiver/decoder to provide interactivity with the user. The applications include: an Internet browser application which uses a PSTN connection to make Internet requests and the television signal path to receive Internet responses; a shopping application operable in an "impulse" mode and a "catalogue" mode; a banking application; a quiz application which runs in synchronism with a quiz television programme; a magazine browser application; and a weather or traffic application. For example, in the Internet application, the user sends an Internet request via a modem to the communications centre and at the communications centre the request is received and submitted to the Internet to receive a response. The Internet response, such as a web page, is supplied to the digital television transmission system and integrated into the digital datastream sent to the user. At the receiver decoder, in the Internet mode, the Internet response is extracted from the digital datastream and supplied to the user.