Re: Open Source implementations Re: Encrypted Media proposal (was RE: ISSUE-179: av_param - Chairs Solicit Alternate Proposals or Counter-Proposals)

On Feb 29, 2012, at 4:40 AM, Henri Sivonen wrote:

On Wed, Feb 29, 2012 at 2:25 PM, Glenn Adams <glenn@skynav.com<mailto:glenn@skynav.com>> wrote:
I'm not sure what is meant by "what the web considers HTML5" but in
general, (current generation) SmartTVs do not try to support browsing
the web at large.
...
(3) these issues are relevant to this WG because these service providers and
their end users are both customers and members of this WG;

Personally, I disagree and think that the World Wide Web Consortium
should be focused on the World Wide Web and not put effort into
catering to user agents that don't try to support browsing the Web at
large.

It would be helpful to at least clearly separate requirements that
pertain to browsers meant to support browsing the Web at large from
requirements that pertain to devices that use HTML for other purposes.

I think this point is moot: TVs and other devices will support general-purpose web browsing, but that is not terribly interesting for the web as it is right now right now, because very few websites work well on a screen 10' away with no pointer. But people are successfully developing 10' user experiences now using web technologies and Left-Right-Up-Down input and delivering those over the Internet. On the other hand people are also developing new input methods for TVs (WiiMote like pointers, Kinect-style gesture detection ... ). There will be many services delivered to TVs using web technologies over the internet as web pages or web apps, but these services will not look just like the services delivered to desktop computers today.

I assume such services are considered part of the "world wide web". Indeed, the W3C mission [1] refers to 'Web on Everything' and mentions TVs explicitly. So the evolution of the web onto such devices is surely in scope of W3C and of the HTML working group. In fact according to its charter [2] the HTML working group is responsible for that evolution as far as HTML is concerned.

As part of that evolution we need to consider the properties of these new devices: that 10' devices do not yet have good pointer interfaces and are resource-constrained compared to desktop PCs or mobile phones, for example. (And, btw, that they typically have much longer development cycles than desktop browsers and are not frequently updated). We should also consider the requirements of the service providers who would like to bring these new web applications to those platforms - especially those service providers who are paid up members of W3C ;-)

...Mark

[1] http://www.w3.org/Consortium/mission
[2] http://www.w3.org/2007/03/HTML-WG-charter


--
Henri Sivonen
hsivonen@iki.fi<mailto:hsivonen@iki.fi>
http://hsivonen.iki.fi/