IPTV Application Challenge

The Challenge aims at discovering innovative IPTV applications, and expanding the range of the broad IPTV ecosystem including e-health, ICT accessibility and all areas to improve social welfare. It focuses on motivating experts to develop original and creative IPTV applications compliant to ITU’s suite of IPTV standards. An awards ceremony, as well as a showcasing of the most promising apps, are planned during WTSA-12 in Dubai, UAE, 20-29 November 2012, an event attended by around 1000 senior representatives from ITU Member States and Sector Members.

The Challenge will be free of charge and open to any entity or individual from an ITU Member State.

Entries in any area will be reviewed by a panel selected by ITU. Some of the possible areas are listed below, but participants should view this as a guide rather than an exhaustive list:

• E-learning
• E-government
• E-service
• Smart living
• E-Health related apps such as:
  • E-pharmacy
  • E-monitoring
  • E-diagnostic
• Media Accessibility such as:
  • Closed captioning
  • Speech recognition

See the Detailed Rules for this Challenge

The Challenge is open to participants from ITU Member States (see www.itu.int/members/index.html). Participants may be individuals, legally established entities (profit, non-profit, academic) and public sector organizations, though not all are eligible for the cash prize. Participants are responsible for compliance with legal requirements of their country. Staff of ITU and of the sponsor(s) of this Challenge as well as members of the jury are not eligible to participate in this Challenge.

1. Individuals must be of age of majority in their country at the time of entry. Individuals may form teams and submit entries on behalf of teams. Individuals who join teams must meet the eligibility requirements.
2. Organizations must be legally established entities (profit, non-profit, academic) or public sector organizations in their respective countries.

Applications must run over ITU-T IPTV standards, either ITU-T H.761 (2011) "Nested context language (NCL) and Ginga-NCL for IPTV services" or ITU-T H.762 (2011) "Lightweight interactive multimedia environment (LIME) for IPTV services".

Any video content must be encoded using ITU-T H.264 "Advanced video coding for generic audiovisual services".

Guideline on the Use of ITU-T H.264 Format for Application Challenge is available here.

The file structure of the application must follow the details found in Draft Recommendation H.IPTV-Widget "IPTV Widget Service".

A summary of the draft ITU-T H.IPTV-Widget is available here.

How to Refer to Video Content from H.762 (LIME) Content for Application Challenge is described here.

Participants must register on-line before submitting their application. On-line registration will be available on the Challenge website at: www.itu.int/challenges/iptv.

The on-line registration period will run from 15 June 2012 until 12:00, 15 August 2012 CET (Central European Time).

When registering, the following information needs to be provided:

• Participant information (name, country, postal address, email address and phone number);
• Category that the entry falls in ( or in Article 3);
• ITU-T standard(s) that the application runs over
• Application title (optional);
• Application outline, a brief description of the objective and function of the application (optional).

Following the registration, a registration ID and a work ID that must be included in the submission, a description form as well as information on the FTP area (see Article 7) will be sent to the registered participant by email.

See the Detailed Rules for this Challenge

All submissions must be submitted in English in electronic format to ITU through its FTP area. Information on the FTP will be sent to each registered participant by email.

Only submissions to this FTP area will be accepted. A submission must be comprised of 1) a software application, 2) a description of the application, 3) screenshots in “.ppt” or “.pdf” format illustrating the application’s proposed features and functions, and 4) a short video in WMV format lasting a maximum of five minutes) that demonstrates how the application runs.

The description of the application should use a description form which will be sent to the registered participants by email, and include the following information:

• Registration ID and Work ID (see Article 6);
• Application title;
• Description of the application, including
  1. Summary of the application;
  2. How to use the application;
  3. What are the user benefits;
  4. Appealing points of the application on each evaluation criterion (see Article 5 above), if any;

ITU will acknowledge receipt of the submission by email.

See the Detailed Rules for this Challenge

• 1st ITU IPTV Application Challenge
• IPTV Global Standards Initiative (IPTV-GSI)
• NCL Club: Repository of online resources for ITU-T H.761 use and implementation
• LIME Starter Kit: Open source information on ITU-T H.762
• Free access to an Apps’ development tool for LIME (ITU-T H.762)