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Overview
Following the success of its regional workshops in Tokyo, Japan (September 2010) and Berlin, Germany (February 2011), the W3C (the World Wide Web Consortium) held the Third Web and TV Workshop - "Entertaining Content" - on September 19-20 in Hollywood, California, USA hosted by Comcast. The main focus of the third workshop was to gain diverse regional perspectives from industry stakeholders and specific use cases and requirements from the content creators and distributors, many of whose are headquartered in North America. Together with the first and second workshops, this third event helped to complete the global and diverse industry perspectives that W3C brings to its work.
The detailed minutes from the workshop are also available.
Workshop Goal
In the previous two workshops, participants identified opportunities for convergence of Web and TV infrastructure and began identifying technical challenges. The goal of the third workshop was to continue the global conversation about the convergence of the Web and TV and its impact on the needs of content creators and distributors. The needs brought forward during the two-day workshop were subsequently discussed by the W3C Web and TV Interest Group face-to-face meeting immediately following the workshop.
Workshop Participants
The workshop had 147 attendees from key stakeholder industries including:
- Television Broadcasters
- Browser vendors
- Cable television operators
- Consumer electronics manufacturers
- Content providers
- Video service providers
- Semiconductor manufacturers
- Research institutes
- Software vendors
- Standardization organizations
- Telecommunications companies
Please see also the attendees list.
Executive Summary
The Third Web and TV Workshop put a spotlight on significant gaps between the Entertainment Industry's and the Web community's experiences, perspectives and expectations. While participants all embraced the current and future benefits of the W3C's Open Web Platform based on core Web standards such as HTML5, CSS and SVG, they acknowledged that closer collaboration of stakeholders in the entire ecosystem is needed to bring desired results to fruition faster.
Video content and distribution requirements, as well as device and content security challenges were identified as key priorities. Greater contribution of concrete, specific use cases and requirements from content creation and distribution organizations as well as contribution of techncial staff resources are needed in order to accelerate the standards development work. Additionally, browser vendor companies and the developer community needs to understand the unique challenges that the Web and TV convergence represents.
The workshop included a variety of presentation topics and formats, including keynote presentations, short presentations, moderated panel discussions, demonstrations and audience participation. The keynote speaker Sree Kotay, Comcast, expressed a strong sense of urgency for the industry to make Web and TV convergence work, or watch the opportunity pass by. W3C's CEO Jeff Jaffe explained how the Open Web Platform is transforming broadcasting, entertainment and home network industries as well as many other industries. Philippe Le Hegaret provided deep technical overviews of the current and future Web standards work that are the foundational building blocks for the Open Web Platform.
The co-chairs of the W3C Web and TV Interest Group provided status reports on the Media Pipeline and Home Networking Task forces. CableLabs' CTO Ralph Brown lead a discussion panel whose participants represented consumer/end user, content creator and distributor points of view. Subsequent sessions provided a variety of demonstrations, technical presentations and panel discusions. (See detailed outline below with links to presentations.)
Key take-aways from the workshop included:
- Agreement of the potential to leverage existing technologies, e.g., HTML and CSS, and not reinvent the wheel.
- Combination of multiple input modalities, e.g., text, voice and Braille, would be useful.
- The Home Network Task Force of the Web and TV Interest Group will bring their requirements to the Device APIs Working Group, and see whether the requirements are in scope of the Working Group or not.
- Regarding captioning, a Community Group was proposed. The Web Media Text Tracks Community Group started on September 30.
- There is strong need for adaptive streaming in standardized way, which is addressed in the Media Pipeline Task Force.
- Further investigation of the existing implementations and conversations with other standardization bodies are needed, particularly regardingnew APIs for TV services.
- The Media Pipeline Task Force is investigating requirements for standard APIs for control of and error reporting from DRM systems.
- There is an issue of privacy on Parental Control that needs further study.
- Emergency response requirements are important but need more analysis.
- Clear use cases and requirements that address the gaps between the existing technology are needed. Greater participation among all the stakeholders is required to achieve success.
Specific conclusions and actions:
- The Open Web Platform has strong potential and is on the right track, though there needs to be even stronger collaboration within the W3C and with the community.
- The Web and TV Interest Group will discuss the issues from this third workshop during its first F2F meeting on September 21-22, and see what has been done by the existing Task Forces, what additional work the group can take on, and what work is out of scope or needs more resource support.
- The W3C will hold the Technical Plenary and Advisory Committee Meeting (TPAC) 2011 on October 31-November 4 in Santa Clara, and many W3C Working Groups will have their F2F meetings there. Representatives from the Web and TV Interest Group will meet with related Working Groups during the Technical Plenary meeting week to discuss the Web and TV requirements with them.
Workshop Session Details
During the final "Next Steps & Wrap up" session, we reviewed W3C's standardization process mentioning the latest update of HTML5, HTML.next and CSS. This was followed by a panel discussion by browser vendors (Access, Apple, Google, Opera and Microsoft) to review all the issues raised during the previous sessions. We had an interesting and lively discussion during the following dedicated workshop sessions.
Welcome and Scene Setting
→ [Minutes]
- Brief introduction from the Organizing Committee — Karen Myers and Kaz Ashimura (W3C) [slides]
- Welcome to the Workshop — Jeff Jaffe (W3C) [slides]
- Keynote: Addressing HTML5’s Gaps for TV Services — Sree Kotay (Comcast) [paper]
- HTML5 Overview — Philippe Le Hégaret (W3C) [slides]
- Web and TV IG Overview
Session 1 / Content Provider and Consumer Perspective
→ [Minutes]
Session 2 / Multi-screen TV in the Home Network (Demo)
→ [Minutes]
- Hybridcast - Hiroshi Fujisawa (NHK) [paper, slides]
- Expanding the Horizontal of Web — Tatsuya Igarashi (Sony) [paper, slides]
- A Multi-protocol Home Networking Implementation for HTML5 — Clarke Stevens (CableLabs) [paper, slides]
- User Interface Development for SmartTV using Web technology and CEA2014 — George Sarosi (Time Warner Cable) [paper, slides]
Session 3 / Multi-screen TV in the Home Network (Panel)
→ [Minutes]
- Web & Home Networks — Amol Bhagwat (CableLabs) [slides]
Session 4 / Synchronized Metadata (and Accessibility, Captioning)
→ [Minutes]
- TV Services and Media Transport + demo — Bob Lund + Eric Winkelman (CableLabs) [paper, slides]
- Second Screen Displaying Life Logs and TV Contents Information (demo) — Manabu Motegi (NTT) [paper]
- HTML5 as a platform for delivering movie extras and interactivity — Jim Helman (MovieLabs) [paper]
- WebVTT in HTML5 for video accessibility and beyond — Silvia Pfeiffer (Google) [paper]
Session 5 / Content Format and Codecs (DASH and Codec standards)
→ [Minutes]
- W3C Web & TV Third Workshop Microsoft Position Paper — Kilroy Hughes (Microsoft) [paper, slides]
- Scalable Video Coding based DASH for efficient usage of network resources — Yago Sánchez (Fraunhofer HHI) [paper, slides]
- MPEG's Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP - An Enabling Standard for Internet TV — Thomas Stockhammer (Qualcomm) [paper, slides]
Session 6 / Content Protection and DRM
→ [Minutes]
- HTML5: Now with Premium Content - Bent G Christensen (Cisco) [paper]
- Commercial Video Provider HTML5 DRM Requirements — Bob Lund (CableLabs) [paper, slides]
Session 7 / Additional Device & User Requirements
→ [Minutes]
- Connected TV User Experience — Russell Berkoff (Samsung) [paper]
- XMPP and profiling — Bent G Christensen (Cisco) [paper]
- Parental Guidance handling — Christian Fuhrhop (Fraunhofer FOKUS) [paper, slides]
- Multiple Screen Scenario – Additional Use Case and Key Issues — Shunichi Gondo (Toshiba) [paper]
- A declarative approach to Broadcast TV — Jean-Charles Verdié (MStar) [paper, slides]
Session 8 / Next Steps & Wrap up
→ [Minutes]
- Presentation on HTML.next - Philippe Le Hégaret (W3C) [slides]
- Workshop issue review - Panel
- Wrap up & Next Steps - Philipp Hoschka (W3C) [slides]
F2F Feedback and IG Report
The Web and TV Interest Group discussed all the topics from the third workshop during its first F2F meeting on September 21-22, and decided on next steps for each topic, e.g., submit functional gaps to Working Groups or create new Interest Group Task Forces. The conclusion is included in the group's September Report.
Please note that all the requirements raised during the previous workshops (=Tokyo workshop and Berlin workshop) were also discussed and categorized during the F2F meeting, and have been included in the above group report.
Requirements and functional gaps identified in the group report are being discussed with W3C Working Groups, which define new standards for the Web.