Re: DAP rechartering discussion

On Mon, 21 Mar 2011 19:23:42 -0000, Mark Watson <watsonm@netflix.com>  
wrote:

>> In my experience from writing EPG apps though, I have to say that  
>> having some baseline search and metadata interoperability would be  
>> very, very nice. This doesn't have to be all-powerful (that's too hard  
>> a problem to solve) but at least some minimally common parts  
>> (navigating categories, simple full text search) helps a lot.
>
> In the interest of provoking debate, I'd say that I'm not sure the  
> concept of a universal "EPG" is valid in the "web&tv" world at all.  
> There is no "Electronic Web Guide" for the web. We have search engines,  
> but these are 'as thin as possible' to get you as fast as possible to  
> the site you want: they do not constrain sites to be described in some  
> particular metadata format, but there are tools for sites to describe  
> themselves to search engines if they wish. If you know what site you  
> want, you go can straight to that and, either way, the site then has  
> control of your user experience when you get there.

...

> One can imagine the "discovery and security" layers of a UC API being  
> baked into the device, but once you've discovered a service you get a  
> link to a resource which is hosted by that service itself - i.e.  
> service-specific web app code on the device, enabling direct interaction  
> between service specific client and server rather than having that  
> interaction mediated by a standards-defined layer baked into the device.

I believe the essence of the point you make is that the user experience  
should be controlled by the individual service. I think the model you  
describe is an interesting one and would not suggest forcing interaction  
to be mediated by a single route, especially for connected-TV internet  
delivered services.

The TV seems, to me, to be becoming a hybrid device, with access to both  
broadcast and internet delivered services. At present there is no means of  
content discovery for users that cuts across all services available to it.  
A 'search engine' approach (as a possible solution to this) is going to  
have an uphill struggle: the available content and services may vary from  
one user's device/subscription to another or between the user and the  
search-engine; and in this model, that data may only be available from  
apps/services hosted on the TV itself.  I would like to think that this  
might be an opportunity for us to do better :-)



Matt

-- 
| Matt Hammond
| Research Engineer, BBC R&D, Centre House, London
| http://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/

Received on Wednesday, 23 March 2011 00:51:10 UTC