Introduction, Use-case and a comment

Hi everyone,

I recently joined this group, representing Netflix. There are many devices
already deployed which support "second screen" presentation of Netflix
content. Presently the "controller" for these devices is the Netflix
application running on a phone or tablet. We would love for our website to
be able to act as a controller as well and the Presentation API seems like
a great way to enable that.

Our use-case is essentially the same as the "flinging" one outlined on the
wiki: a user visits www.netflix.com, selects some content and starts
playback. The user has a TV that supports Netflix and their UA can discover
this TV (for example using DIAL). The user is shown a familiar icon for
"flinging" content to another screen. The user clicks that icon and is
shown a list of devices, including their TV. The user selects the TV and
the content begins playing on the TV. The user can control playback on the
TV using the website.

I have one comment / question about the API: it seems to me that a site
should have no visibility of the existence or name of a device without user
permission. It also seems to me that the permission (in the above use-case)
is given when the user selects a device from the drop-down list. It would
be a bad user experience to need a separate permission dialog.

Some consequences of the above:
- the "flinging" icon needs to be shown by the UA, not the site. Otherwise
the site is given the knowledge that there are devices available, before
the user has given permission
- the list of devices needs to be shown by the UA, not the site.
- the events sent to the site are less "device discovered" events and more
"device selected" events. The site must indicate to the UA that it supports
second-screen presentation, but after that the next thing it will know is
when the user has actually selected a device. This could be a long time
after the UA has discovered the device and lit up the "flinging" icon.

>From a user experience point of view, the different use-cases should all be
presented the same way. I would imagine that Chrome would use the same
"Cast" icon they already use, Safari would use the "AirPlay" icon etc. Of
course I don't speak for those guys and they may have their own opinions,
but from a user perspective I don't care whether I am "flinging" to a
Chromecast, YouTube app, Netflix App, AirPlay Receiver or having the
content rendered locally and sent via Mirracast - I just want to the other
screen.

I hope this makes some sense and could be factored into the Presentation
API work. I looking forward to helping out however we can.

Best,

Mark Watson