could anyone tell me, in technical terms how interactive TV works?

Answer 1

In Un-technical terms:

Interactive TV (iTV) is any television with what is called a “return path”. Information flows not only from broadcaster to viewer, but also back from viewer to broadcaster. Another feature common to all iTV systems is the ability to offer each TV set, or each viewer who uses that TV set, a different choice of content.

Technical Details are here:

http://arnic.info/Papers/HG-FB_fclj_v55_N1.pdf
http://www.interactivetvweb.org/tutorial/mhp/index.shtml
http://www.itvdictionary.com/itv.html


And if you really want the details you can Pay for these papers on Interactive TV
http://www.itvt.com/research.html

Answer 2

You press the red button thingy on your black button box that works the telly. The wizard in the telly sees what button you press and does some right clever and magic stuff to make it all work. I think he uses a PIC 16f128C4 microcontroller at some point to calculate the cyclic redundancy checksum for the synchronised dodecahedral.

Answer 3

nope