An introduction to ICTV

ICTV is a simple content management system for digital signage on multiple screens. It is a web application written in Python. Everything from the management of the content to its reproduction on screens happens in a web browser. ICTV is easily extendable, with a simple and powerful plugin system. ICTV is free and open-source. It has been developed at UCLouvain and is currently being deployed on more than twenty screens throughout the campus.

Key concepts

Simplicity is a key goal of ICTV. Only a few concepts are needed to be explained to understand the principles of ICTV.

Plugins

Plugins are at the heart of ICTV. They are programs that bring content to the system. They can be automated programs that operates autonomously once configured, such as a plugin that creates content based on an RSS feed. They can also offer a rich web interface to the users of ICTV.

There already exist several useful plugins:

• editor is a fully featured web editor to create slideshows.
• embed allows any web page to be embedded into the system.
• rss is an RSS parser creating content based on an RSS feed.
• img-grabber easily extracts images from web pages and reproduces them in a stylish way.

Channels

Channels are used to organize content. Much like TV channels, they allow various themed information to be brought in and distributed over the screen networks. Each channel is an instance of a plugin, i.e. a parametrisation of this plugin. Channels can have several types of access rights to restrict their use to particular user.

Channel bundles

Channels can be grouped into bundles. They allow to group channels broadcasting similar content. Screen administrator can subscribe once to a bundle that can be expanded later on.

Screens

Screens are outputs to display the content produced inside ICTV. They may be physical, e.g. a TV, or virtual, e.g. a web page. Content is brought to screens via subscriptions. A screen displays the content of all channels it is subscribed to.