Interactive TV in Brazil

More than half the population of Brazil lives in remote towns and villages. Many have no telephone connection. But the Brazilian power line network covers almost 95 per cent of populated areas. And wherever there is power, there are usually television sets.

Bearing that fact in mind, the researchers involved in the SAMBA (System for Advanced interactive digital television and Mobile services in BrAzil) project broadcast digital television signals with Java applications embedded in them into the small Brazilian town of Barreirinhas, which is 300km from the nearest major city.

Some 30 Barreirinhas households, in the vicinity of a 3km power line, were equipped with special set-top boxes that enabled them to access the broadcast data. The set-top boxes were also connected to the houses’ mains electricity supply so that the power line could be used by the TV viewer as a means to send instructions back to the system.

‘The broadcast was over the normal television broadcasting system with an antenna and repeater in the town,’ explains Oscar Mayora Ibarra, project coordinator of SAMBA from the Italian research company Create-Net.