Group forms spec to 'TV Anytime'
eetimes.com
By Junko Yoshida
EE Times
(08/06/99, 3:23 p.m. EDT)
WASHINGTON - In a bid to expedite the rollout of “personal television”
service to the consuming public, a global group of broadcasters, set-top
box vendors and software developers is coming together to standardize
methods for describing content in digital-television and Internet data
streams.
The loosely organized initiative, which held an informal kickoff meeting here
recently as the TV Anywhere Forum, hopes to hammer out draft
specifications as soon as next July to help next-generation consumer
systems equipped with mass storage automatically find, capture and store
the information users want.
With roots in the Digital Audio Visual Council (A
HREF="http://www.davic.org/">Davic), the nascent group is developing an
opportunities document to pitch its concept to industry. Its basic premise is
that with the rapid decline in costs for digital storage, “local storage would
have a profound effect on the way that audiovisual content could be
distributed to consumers,” said forum interim chairman Simon Parnall, a
project manager for British Broadcasting Corp.'s Research and
Development's Multimedia and Networks Group.
The initiative will seek to develop tools and common specifications for
content distribution and management. The goal is to allow broadcasters and
system vendors to develop applications that leverage the local mass storage
inside a TV or set-top.
Targeted technologies include object acquisition, content-description
metadata, hooks for developing navigational services and application
programming interfaces (APIs) for content management. The TV Anytime
specs would cover content delivered via real-time broadcasting and file
transfer, by both broadcast and Internet services, and are intended to be
open specs that will not be tied to specific architectures or services.
TV Anytime will target a new generation of clients that will “need to
manage the process of content acquisition based on data gleaned from
services,” said Parnall. He added that the resident navigator, “such as the
tool used to navigate around the content stored on a set-top box, will be a
vital element in future home systems.”
The forum is entering the scene at a time when such companies as Tivo and
Replay Networks are kick-starting personal-television services based on
proprietary, mutually incompatible specifications. Without standardized
approaches for content referencing, APIs and metadata, system vendors
would be compelled to develop separate software solutions for each
service. Broadcasters may face similar headaches, being forced to tailor
content-distribution methods for distinct services.
TV Anytime hopes to head off that scenario. “Our goal is to achieve
consensus [on specs] so that a whole new range of services can be
developed and deployed,” Parnall said. “In any business like this, vertical
solutions are first-they must be. But pretty soon, even companies [with
proprietary offerings] realize that standards mean more business, a greater
range of services available to customers, increased awareness and less
hesitation in the marketplace.”
As service operators and systems vendors seek new revenue streams, one
approach is to set aside a portion of the TV or set-top's hard-drive real
estate for new services and applications. Common specifications for
services and clients in that space would enable new applications to reach
more people more quickly, say proponents of open specs.
Given the high level of vendor interest and activity in new digital services,
Parnall believes a “fast-track” approach is required to bring such specs
about. The forum hopes to hold meetings every two months and to produce
a draft standard by July 2000. The opportunities document is expected to
be disclosed as early as next month at the International Broadcasters
Convention (IBC) in Amsterdam.
Once the standards are set, many in the industry see new opportunities
arising for their businesses. “For us, things like the [forum-targeted]
metadata scheme and automated navigational system are a big deal,” said
Andy Fischer, director of marketing at MbTV Networks, a division of
Metabyte Inc. (Fremont, Calif.) that develops software for interactive-TV
products. “I hope that the TV Anytime standards will quicken the pace of
the addition of agent technology to set-top boxes and advanced TVs, and
will open up multiple distribution pipes-such as Internet-based content as
well as broadcast content-to consumer equipment.”
Fischer said he believes the standards “are needed to enable horizontal
solutions.”
'No members' yet
The forum has yet to formalize a list of participants, but Parnall said that
companies that either attended the first meeting or have expressed an
interest in the group's activities include Philips, Sony, Pioneer, IBM, BBC,
the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), NDS, BSkyB, Microsoft, Intel
and Tivo.
The group is just now developing a memorandum of understanding for
potential members, Parnall said. Until interested companies and individuals
formally sign on, “We really have no members at all, and it would be
inappropriate to state that we have any official organization.” But the forum
intends to welcome all comers, he added, as long as “they sign the
memorandum of understanding and then turn up at meetings.”
Jim Barton, chief technology officer at Tivo, confirmed that he has been
contacted by the TV Anytime Forum for participation. The company hasn't
yet decided whether it will participate in the next meeting, he said, but is
“generally supportive of the idea. It is flattering that people are taking the
idea of personal television seriously enough to build standards around it.”
The TV Anytime/TV Anywhere concept had been kicking around Davic's
Applications Requirements Technical Committee since 1996. Davic,
created in 1994, will disband after September, having seen its specifications
accepted by the International Standards Organization under
ISO/IEC16500. Davic members voted at a June meeting in Poitiers,
France, to execute the “euthanasia clause” built into its statutes. Until the
vote took place, TV Anytime/TV Anywhere had been discussed as a
subject for Davic 1.5 specifications.
Within Davic, TV Anytime was conceived to deal with temporal shifts for
time-shifted viewing of content, while TV Anywhere addressed spatial
shifts, describing the real-time stream aspects of content delivery to
set-tops using best-effort networks. Parnall, who is also chairman of
Davic's Applications Requirements Technical Committee, stressed that the
“execution of the [euthanasia] clause doesn't mean that there was no
interest in TV Anytime. Rather, it meant that there was sufficient interest to
cause members to believe that a different organization was probably
required in order to pursue this important task.”
He said TV Anytime and TV Anywhere fit together and he expects the TV
Anytime Forum to tackle TV Anywhere.
TV Anytime's targeted scope of technologies is fairly broad. The group
hopes to develop such key technologies as identification schemes,
resolution processes, object acquisition, content description metadata and
rights management. All are considered necessary for new methods of
content distribution and content management.
Metadata specifications, for example, will add content information to aid
searching and will enable agent technology. An agent, designed as an
autonomous object operating on behalf of a user roaming through the
network on one or more servers and services, is expected to enable flexible
services both for the user and service provider. The new specifications will
establish rules and mechanisms within the network and set-tops, enabling
agents to live, work and negotiate with other agents.
Metadata specifications can also allow service operators to add control
elements, such as content type, pricing, rights management, segmentation
information, embargo and expiration times and dates, storage requirements
and cross-references to other objects.
The forum will also pursue mechanisms for building hooks for navigational
services. |
