Tim Halle, Director, The Project for Open Source Media (POSM) is presenting Taking Back Television: An Open Approach to the Development and Deployment of Next Generation Media.

The idea of 'taking back' is to open up distribution channels to any interested party. There are issues with access—that's pretty much currently locked out. There are development issues related with access to dev environments and lack of standards.

Solution?

Open up standards and reverse engineer the set top box. Ingredients? hardware components, low end PC, tuner card, NTSC output card, Linux, Mozilla, Mplayer and DCR (Digital Content Recorder).

Open up the EPG (Electronic Program Guide) with agnostic content and transport, user control and making it open to any interested party.

Extending functionality means to first of all solve the problems with ITV, as we know it: latency, slow back channel, weak browsers, "viewer experience" interruption.

Demo:
Tim and his team, then proceed to show a demo of an interactive version of the cop show Boomtown.  Next demo is of an open interactive EPG. Third demo is called Manhattan Project, a documentary that's is enriched with another layer of Flash content that shows animation of nuclear fission. The viewers can then switch back and forth.