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DMG Interactive
DMG
Interactive was founded by Dr. Frank LoPinto and Joe Del
Sordo to explore the possibilities of datacasting to intelligent
devices. The two principals have been collaborating for
over 20 years on multimedia communications projects.
The
Digital Channel is the project that followed a NASA-funded
experiment in the mid-1990s to bring internet access to the
public using cable television technology. The project's
goal was to explore the types of user experiences that could
be provided by a purely one-way data broadcast. Dr. Frank LoPinto holds a patent for his datacasting
technology.
The
Interactive Video Kiosk was developed to demonstrate
the kind of user interface that could be supported. It
has practical value in its own right. Our current thrust
is to install advertiser-supported kiosks in public places.
Datacasting
has become a common form of transmitting data in certain areas
of industry through the internet. Though not as commonplace
in the public sector, datacasting as a way of transmitting interactive
programming files has been discussed at length in many publications.
In the United States, starting in 2006, we began to use our
technology to test services that would become available to the
public and private sectors over cable channels in the future.
We also used our own datacasting technology to broadcast computer
files using ordinary television images and broadcasting techniques
- not through the internet.
The
image below illustrates a technique we used to broadcast data.
The stripe near the bottom of the image carries information.
We were able to convert the text of the U.S. Bill of Rights
into television images, then send the images and recover the
data, thereby making the test a success. The technique
works with ANY computer file.
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Joe Del Sordo has an undergraduate degree in Communication Arts
and a Master's in Computer Technology in Education.
He has been active in film & video production throughout
his career, including Directing Dialogue Replacement for Miami
Vice and other movie segments and programs. His work
for news organizations includes NBC, PBS, and the BBC.
He won an Emmy as part of a PBS crew covering the Cancun Summit
with Ronald Reagan. Most recently, he was Technical Director
for Satellite feeds for the Bush-Kerry debate in Miami.
Originally a native of New York City, he now lives in
South Florida (USA).
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This digital photo was taken in Shenandoah National Park
(Virginia).
The
colored stripe
was generated by encoding software that reads a file and produces a digital
image representing a portion of the file's contents. The image is
superimposed on the photo to produce what you see.
The same concept can be
applied to moving images. The file's contents are spread across many
video frames of a television program. When the program is broadcast,
so is the data, which is re-converted at the receiver end.
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Frank LoPinto has a Ph.D. in Physics. He has
performed R&D in physics and computer science at Argonne National Labs,
Bell Labs, DARPA, NASA, and INTELSAT.
He presented technical papers at conferences around the
world and served on national and international standards committees.
He holds patents in datacasting and cryptography.
Born in New York City, he now lives on Vancouver Island
in British Columbia (Canada).
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For years we’ve been seeing the television screen populated with many
areas filled with text and other information. Now, those areas can serve a dual purpose.
By choosing the amount of real estate a programmer wants
to dedicate to Datacasting, large files can be transferred more
quickly.
The resulting viewer experience allows for updated program materials
to be available throughout the day.
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Jon Doranz has an undergraduate degree in Telecommunications,
and is completing a Master's in Computer Technology in Education.
He has worked on
projects implementing streaming media and compression technologies, live
web-casts, and media database development.
Jon is native
to the Washington D.C. metro area (via New Jersey), and now
resides in South Florida.
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