Special Issue: "Thinking beyond the Box: Designing Interactive TV

Nowadays television means more than the passive consumption of broadcast content. Television sets are equipped with modern computer technologies and provide manifold opportunities for accessing content interactively and on-demand. Personal devices such as the Smartphone can be used as a second screen to show additional information, to chat with others and interact with the content on the main screen. Additionally, new technologies like gesture or audio recognition are being integrated in current market technologies. These enable new ways to control and interact with content. Beyond simply watching television, the TV set now provides new opportunities for using home-related services including online gaming, visualization of energy consumption, home security or support for healthy living. The TV set is thus becoming a high-tech platform for on-demand media consumption which integrates a variety of home computing services.