Call for papers
Authors: Lee Newton 
Published: August 2005

IEEE COMMUNICATIONS MAGAZINE

FEATURE TOPIC:

ENTERTAINMENT EVERYWHERE: System and Networking Issues in Emerging Network-Centric Entertainment Systems

BACKGROUND: The experience of bringing the Internet into our lives deeply is now shared by millions of people. Take the USA, for example. It is reported that more than a fifth of American households has a high-speed, always-on, Internet access, and an increasing number of them is exploiting wireless technologies to distribute the broadband connection throughout the rooms of their homes. With such a high-speed, always-on, connection a drastic revolution is coming in the way people watch movies and news, listen to music, and play games. This change has been driven fundamentally by two dominant factors: First, the technological advances of computer-based digital multimedia technology (high quality video and sound) have provided consumers with good motivations to upgrade their home entertainment systems (e.g., from mechanical VHS tape drives to digital DVD). Second, (wireless) networking technologies have enabled the possibility to shift what they first consumed on their desktop PC in the office to their digital TV equipment in the living room, as well as to the front pockets in their jackets. All these mean that in an entertainment-equipped house we might easily find a broadband entertainment center built on the top of a Cat-6 Ethernet cable infrastructure or on a Wi-Fi network. Such an entertainment platform might be comprised, for example, of a connection from the computer to the digital stereo or the TV devices, as well as of an interconnected PlayStation2 or XBox governed by programmable TiVo equipment for online play. In essence, what is really new, nowadays, is that we know what tomorrow's entertainment technology will bring to us: a "magic box" where every game ever thought, every movie ever made, every song ever sung, plus news, sport events and shows, will be available for instant enjoyment with just one click on a button. While interest for conducting research in this area was moderate for a long time, recently, instead, great opportunities have arisen in academia, as well as in industry, for developing researches in the field of computer-based entertainment systems, especially focused on the provision of networking and system support to entertainment. Obviously, all these exciting technological advances have raised a number of interesting research questions: How can the Internet native language (i.e. the TCP/IP protocol) take over this complex scenario for scaling the delivery of entertainment contents to very large numbers of users? How can digital entertainment be delivered efficiently to small devices such as PDAs and cell phones? How can new system development styles, like the peer-to-peer style for example, have influence on the architecture of computer-based entertainment systems? How can the employed protocol be integrated to optimize the distribution of entertainment contents?

SCOPE OF CONTRIBUTIONS:

This Feature Topic solicits paper submissions from all researchers involved in the field of computer-based entertainment to provide an opportunity to publish state-of-the art original papers.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

Networking and System Support for Entertainment Systems

Wireless and Mobile Technologies for Entertainment

Wireless Multimedia for Entertainment

Networked Systems for Music and Movie Distribution

Architectures, Platforms and Protocols for Networked Multiplayer

Games

Games on Mobile and Resource-constrained Devices

Games and Wireless Technologies

Networked In-Home Entertainment Systems

Networked In-Car/Flight/Train Entertainment Systems

Interactive TeleVision and Interactive Digital Storytelling

Networked Technologies for Sport and Entertainment

Wearable Networked Technologies for Entertainment

Augmented, Virtual and Mixed Reality Technologies for Entertainment

Integration and Interoperability Issues in Entertainment Systems

Prospective authors should e-mail their manuscripts as a postscript or pdf attachment to the guest editors by November 01, 2004. (Please see http://www.comsoc.org/~ci for the authors guidelines.) The following is the timetable for this feature topic publication:

SCHEDULE FOR SUBMISSIONS:

Manuscript Submission: November 01, 2004

Acceptance Notification: January 15, 2005

Final Manuscript Due: March 01, 2005

Publication Date: May 2005

Guest Editors

Barcin Kozbe

Ericsson Inc,

11121 Willows Rd, NE Suite 101

Redmond, WA 98052 USA

barcin.kozbe@ericsson.com