4th FOKUS Media Web
Symposium

Despite the growing importance of mobile connectivity, television is still the most important source for information and entertainment in people’s households. To meet customers’ demands for a converged broadcast and Web experience, many devices today are already equipped with Internet access and various technologies to access applications and services or allow companion device scenarios (e.g. using tablets and smartphones). This tutorial overviews the emerging Hybrid TV market, technologies used, current standardization activities and future trends. Furthermore, methodologies and requirements to introduce or expand existing services on TVs are laid out.

IPTV & Hybrid TV Landscape

Hybrid TV or Connected TV have become commonly used terms for TV sets capable of Internet-based applications. This tutorial deals with currently deployed proprietary as well as standardized platforms (e.g. HbbTV) and relationships between these solutions are illustrated. In addition a categorization of commercial off-the-shelf devices and their supported services is given for participants of this tutorial.

Enabling Technologies

What are common enablers for IPTV, Hybrid TV or WebTV services and how can they be integrated? This question is answered by diving into topics such as HTTP Adaptive Streaming (especially MPEG DASH), Common Encryption (CENC), Digital Rights Management (DRM) and Content Delivery Networks (CDN). A special emphasis is given to HTML5 based video delivery and according W3C work Media Source Extension (MSE) and Encrypted Media Extension (EME). Issues and limitations for new interactive services are debated and best-practices for these challenges are given. Advances features such as ad insertion (media splicing) and synchronized media play-out will be addressed as well.

Services

State of the art TV applications and services are explored in this part of the tutorial. Where and how can new services be published and what are potential “killer applications” in the future? This discussion will focus on the needs of content providers with existing services or plans to introduce services in this emerging Hybrid TV market. Furthermore opportunities for converged Web and TV services are discussed as well as technical challenges explained.

Demonstration and hands on

Based on FAMIUM – an end-to-end streaming prototype implementation meant for early technology evaluation and interoperability testing – we will demonstrate a complete media workflow starting with video preparation, transcoding segmentation, and encryption to finally deliver the video via HTTP streaming to HTML5/MSE/EME based browser implementations.

Level

Introductory

Prerequisites

No prerequisites

Intended Audience

The tutorial is aimed at anyone interested in the convergence of broadcast and broadband, business opportunities, technical challenges and current research activities regarding IPTV, Hybrid TV and WebTV.

Introduction

Multi-Screen applications are entering the market with force. TV sets and – so-called – companion devices (smartphones and tablets) have outgrown their original purpose and are now playing together an important role in multi-screen context.

Almost every modern connected TV can be controlled with a smartphone app provided by the manufacturer. These apps range from simple remote control replacements, to fully featured media centers including PVR programming, interactive EPGs and video streaming from the TV to the smartphone. Also new generation of companion devices provide connectivity to large displays and give mobile applications the ability to mirror or extend the small screen of the mobile device.

Today’s standard application models are however focused on single devices and screens. Multi-Screen applications face new challenges such as discovery of devices and services, launch of applications on remote devices, synchronization of application state across devices as well as timeline synchronization of multiple media streams, application to application communication, etc. New application development paradigms, concepts, protocols and technologies addressing these challenges are getting mature and will be presented in this tutorial.

In this tutorial we will introduce the concepts of Multi-Screen with a survey on application scenarios and brief the participants about technical implications and requirements that each use case implies. Furthermore, we will explain the underlying technical and design challenges for building multi-screen applications. We will also discuss existing technologies and standards that offer solutions for specific challenges we identified.

Challenges for Multi-Screen Applications

Multi-screen applications face challenges that go beyond traditional applications and require developers to think about additional challenges. In this part of the tutorial we will examine different aspects of Multi-Screen applications from a more technical perspective and cover several relevant topics ranging from distribution of apps across devices, discovery and synchronization to performance, security and alignment of user preferences issues. Participant will also learn how to design multi-screen applications and what are the challenges and best practices from UX perspective.

Multi-Screen Technologies & Standards

We will continue the tutorial by presenting latest technical solutions and protocols in the industry such as UPnP and Bonjour for device and service discovery in local networks, DLNA, Miracast and Airplay for media and screen sharing (mirroring and extension), DIAL for remote application launch, iBeacon for wake-up and local notification, WebSockets and WebRTC for communication between applications and many others. We will also discuss in this part of the tutorial relevant standardization activities in different bodies and organizations such as HbbTV, Hybridcast, W3C (NSD and Webscreens) as well as existing and up-coming multi-screen frameworks such as Samsung MultiScreen SDK, LG PARS Framework, IRT Second Screen Framework, Fraunhofer FOKUS FAMIUM Framework, etc. Participants will learn what solutions these technologies bring and which gaps still remain with respect to Multi-screen application development.