Abstract: A digital broadcast station is configured to "turn around" and add interactive programming to a television signal conveyed by a remote network. Prior to conveying the television signal, the remote network inserts a trigger within the vertical blanking interval of the signal. The trigger contains command information to control the loading and/or playing of a designated interactive program. After the trigger is combined with the television signal, the combined signal is modulated and transmitted from the remote network via a satellite uplink. This combined signal is correspondingly received at the digital broadcast station where it is digitized and routed through a video network for channel assignment and other processing. From the video network, the digitized television signal is provided to a VBI decoder which extracts the trigger. The extracted trigger is provided to an interactive flow manager and server to control the loading or playing of an interactive program identified by the trigger.

Abstract: The present invention is a post production process for assembling a video program from a body of source material by adding source materials to the master program in a series of jobs. During the initial job, edited source materials are simultaneously recorded in the master program medium and a temporary archive media which temporarily stores each program segment. During each subsequent job, the new program segment recorded into the program is simultaneously recorded in the temporary archive media, and the previously recorded program segment is played back from the temporary archive media synchronously and automatically with the program so that it is available as a source material to which additional source materials can be added in layers to create the next program segment.