Transaction based interactive television system

摘要

An interactive television system where interactive information is inserted in the vertical blanking interval of a standard television signal or some other appropriate medium. The signal is received and decoded by a settop device which sends the decoder signal, via an infrared signal, to a handheld device. The system includes an interactive program authoring system, and programmer tables in the memory of the handheld device which store data for the various interactive events. This system allows a viewer to enter and exit events at any time without having to wait for information to be downloaded and without losing scores. Furthermore, this system allows many interactive programs to run concurrently over extended periods of time while maintaining cumulative scores in the handheld for each interactive program or series of programs.