Creation of a chat room for television network

A chat system for a digital television network comprising a digital operator head end system for broadcasting to subscriber decoders, the digital operator head end system comprising:

• a chat room creation device which communicates with a chat server to create, cancel and join an event related chat room,
• a trigger device which may be programmed to activate itself at the occurrence of an event and automatically sends a request for creation of the event related chat room to the chat room creation device,
• a broadcast device used for preparing a transmission of information to the subscriber decoders, and
• a notification server configured to generate a notification message to be transmitted by the broadcast device, wherein the notification message is related to the creation of the event related chat rooms,
• wherein a subscriber is one of a passive and an active subscriber to the chat room with functionality to switch between the passive and the active subscriber,
• wherein the passive subscriber is not connected to the chat room using a return link and visualizes chat room discussions on the decoder, wherein visualizing comprises:
• buffering the chat room discussions in a buffer for delayed broadcast,
• formatting the chat room discussions for broadcast, when the buffer becomes full,
• inserting the chat room discussions into a table for broadcast to the decoder, and
• broadcasting the chat room discussions to the decoder as part of a digital bundle comprising a service related to the chat room,
• wherein the active subscriber is directly connected to the chat room via a return link.

A method for administrating event related chat rooms in a digital television network comprising:

• maintaining a playlist of events and related information, and
• automatically requesting a chat server to create an event related chat room on occurrence of an event of the playlist,
• wherein a subscriber associated with a decoder configured to receive and display chat messages is one of a passive and an active subscriber to the chat room with functionality to switch between the passive and the active subscriber,
• wherein the passive subscriber is not connected to the chat room using a return link and visualizes chat room discussions on the decoder, wherein visualizing comprises:
• buffering the chat room discussions in a buffer for delayed broadcast,
• formatting the chat room discussions for broadcast, when the buffer becomes full,
• inserting the chat room discussions into a table for broadcast to the decoder, and
• broadcasting the chat room discussions to the decoder as part of a digital bundle comprising a service related to the chat room,
• wherein the active subscriber is directly connected to the chat room via a return link.