From patrick.schouller@inria.fr Thu Apr  1 15:14 MET 1999
To: (Recipient list suppressed)
From: Patrick Schouller 
Subject: a company of the Telecom Italia Group dealing with multimedia
  production and digital broadcasting (cable & satellite, TV, radio,
  internet)search partners in european programms

MEFI-SEI-STSI-SDPP-PS-1999-157

the first call for projects of the E.U. Fifth Framework Programme on
Information Society Technologies has been launched in these days.
Stream is a company of the Telecom Italia Group dealing with multimedia
production and digital broadcasting (cable & satellite, TV, radio,
internet). Digital broadcasting is the Stream's core-business, and we
probably could act as expert technology provider in any project with
potential fall-out related our work.
In the following lines you can find a brief description of some ideas
related to potential projects.
In case your company (or a company of the group your belongs) would find any
interested, please do not hesitate to contact
Igino MANFRE'
Stream SpA
Via Salaria 1021
Telephone	(+39) 0688663380
Mobile	(+39) 3358235346
Fax	(+39) 0688663806
e-mail	manfre@stream.it

Thank you

· TOUR2000: turistical audio-video tour, ideally derived from old
"online-ondisk" systems. It could develop the consumer fruitional platform
(but better the fruitional hardware & software platform standard)  enabling
the tourist (this entity so precious for many european county budget) to
"culturally" know where she/he is placed.
 The tourist could read, listen, see informations related to the place
she/he's walking in. It could be based on a portable "walkmanâ like" DVD
linked to the GPS network in order to know its exact position and equipped
with a multilingual human interface (vocal or pointer based but suitable for
a portable device).
 Through a the GSM (or similar such as DVB-T), these informations it could
be updated. A system of ads  could be the economical sponsorship of the
network. Through "augmented reality" systems, the tourist could walk in
historical landscape "on site". The disc could be navigated on any personal
computer platform, and - more interesting - could be a portable emergency
knowledgebase accessed in conditional access, by security, fire brigade etc .
 The project could be of interest of content owner, hardware manufacturer,
content producer and post-producers, mobile telecom network operator.
· V-show, for the definition of general purpose virtual scenario tools for
the theatrical pre-production (but television too). Today the techology is
mature to offer powerful but cheap system for 3D realtime animation. The
problem only relies in the mis-knowledge of the theatrical requirements,
slightly but solidly different from television set ones.
 The actor could play inside a virtual scene, before the wooden true one is
produced, finding all the limits of any realization. Drivers and filters for
general purpose software, auto-learning taking tools, authoring systems. It
could pick-up a lot of the European cinetheatrical "backoffice" culture and
history.
 The target partecipants are obvious theatres, but video software and
hardware (machines) "tools" manufacturer, video broadcasters.
· SPQR (Stream Picture Quality in Realtime), a for the development of a real
time subjective multiprogram stream analyzer, through (many) specific
human-eye models of  different degree of complexity and specific
applications. This request, directly comes from the daily nightmares of the
multichannel digital television broadcaster anyhow diffused (cable,
satellite, terrestrial) who does not know how the subscriber really "see"
its contents, above any BER characterization.
 The studies to be performed within this project should enable the
production of physical automated continuous system enabling a broadcaster to
know in real time (if possible before) the criticity of his broadcast
emission through the modellisation of any "box" included in his chain .
Something as the old "insertion loss" of analogue memory for any system,
brought in the "semantic" environment of picture quality analysis. These
aspect are already widely investigated, with some commercial - but not
sufficient - implementations, but is quite far from the goal for the
complexity of the algorithms, the power power of  the implementing boards,
misknowledge of broadcaster requirements.
 Universities and Research organizations, broadcasters and broadcasting
industry equipment manufacturers.
· BUS (Broadcast Universal Stream). In the age of  video-computing
convergence, the definition of a manageable format for the interchange of
video broadcast data , either as Stream or files, compliant to the last
EBU-SMPTE document  is a request. It could be also presented in the next TEN
call (currently running, expiring on may), since the usage of content
programme on telco networks is a very hot argument.
 After defining potential standards, the project should take care of
designing high/very-high speed multipurpose programmable interface for the
transcoding, decoding, convertion of any stream in whatever (public and
known) digital format (compressed or not) in any other else. This should be
"architecture" independent in order to avoid the production of single
specific hardware. Network and broadcaster hardware and software industry,
broadcasters as testbed, Telcos as carrier, standardisation bodies could
find an interesting role into.
· Emc2 (European Market Citizen Consortium), for the definition of
broadband diffusion way of any public information able to make of many
nation a single people. The study of multilingual human interfaces, the
design of gateways between the national administrations databases toward an
unique european browsing interface, avoiding the repetition of the errors
that affected similar former European projects.
With a backwise path, starting with a deep study on any possible
exploitation (with a marketing approach) of how to really deliver middleband
(2 Mbps)  to European Citizens, without dreams, with any possible solution
of the last mile problem, the project should allow any "remote"
administration or citizen to rediscover her/his/its role in Europe. All this
through a human interface (not merely "user").
A corner role should be played by local administrations (such as English
"county", French "department" or Italian "provincia") that receiving in any
way the feed acts as a "proxi" sharing and concentrating the European
informations to the citizens (or to more local organizations). They could
became public administration information provider, directly or assigning
this role to a local ISP (Internet Service Provider).
In this way the citizen could start to feel her/his-self at center of the
European activity, indipendently from its geographical position. This
project is targeted to Telcos, leading software houses, expert of
interactive communication, local administrations, the European Commission
Itself.
Stream could collaborate with study on human interface either internet or
for TV oriented set top boxes, in the usage of multimedia contents.
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                        Patrick SCHOULLER
      MINISTERE DE L'ECONOMIE, DES FINANCES ET DE L'INDUSTRIE
                SECRETARIAT D'ETAT A L'INDUSTRIE
Direction Generale de l'Industrie, des Technologies de l'Information et des
Postes
     Service des Technologies et de la Société de l'Information
	    3/5 rue Barbet de Jouy   75353 PARIS  07 SP
Telephone : + 33 1 43 19 34 25    Telecopie : + 33 1 43 19 35 51
Archive de la liste : http://www.evariste.org/actu/schouller/
http://www.industrie.gouv.fr.   http://www.telecom.gouv.fr
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