Re: Motivation for BBC use cases (was Re: webtv-Issue-20: TV Querying and Control)

On 7 June 2011 10:56, Scott Wilson <scott.bradley.wilson@gmail.com> wrote:
> I think its important not to lose sight of the "web" part. What I'm interested in is web applications/W3C widgets being able to interact with the capabilities of the TV and the content. This means that, while UPnP is quite possibly the underlying implementation, there is still a need to expose the capabilities in a way that makes sense for web developers implementing applications in HTML5 and JavaScript rather than low-level native applications directly accessing the hardware layer, which is already possible.

Yes, Web developers can be impatient creatures. I'm not convinced that
UPnP is the right level of abstraction.

That said, WebGL's recent adoption shows that Javascript allows fiddly
low-level APIs to be encapsulated by nicer toolkits and APIs.

We need imho two things: an authenticated bidirectional communication
channel with media centres and devices playing that role. And then
specific collections of messages and interaction patterns with those
services. For a Web standard we can't really assume the devices are on
the same LAN; I think this will be our biggest headaches.

Re widgets, absolutely. I worked on Joost.com's original Widget
system, which was pretty much same as W3C widgets plus some TV APIs.
It was very promising as a platform for extendding TV, ... however
those widgets were all on-screen rather than second screen, which
pretty much fails to be useful -- they get in the way of the TV! If we
can move to W3C widgets on a second screen there is absolutely huge
potential, but to do this we need that communication channel... Once
we've got a communication channel, the rest is relatively easy.

cheers,

Dan


> PS I would take a look at the CEA web binding, but like most web developers I won't spend $450 on a spec document :)

Well, quite.

Received on Tuesday, 7 June 2011 09:09:26 UTC