This charter is written in accordance with section 3.2.2 of the W3C Process.
W3C held a Workshop on "Television and the Web" (TVWeb) in June 1998. At this workshop, it became evident that different standardization bodies and vendors will make a significant effort over the next year to integrate Web and television technologies. This enables applications such as browsing the Web using a television set, or using Web content formats to annotate a television broadcast, making the television more interactive.
Historically, television standards tend to differ between regions of the world, and are issued by regional standardization bodies. Thus, a television receiver purchased in one part of the world is not necessarily usable in another part of the world. This is in stark contrast with the technology used by the Word Wide Web. Any Web user can read all Web pages, no matter where in the world they are stored, because the Web uses the same technology all over the world. The integration of TV and the Web should not lead to a fragmentation of the Web, even though such fragmentation is typical in the television world.
The World Wide Web Consortium is an international organisation, with branches in America, Asia and Europe. It is therefore well-positioned to avoid the regional solutions typical of TV standards when it comes to integrating the Web and television.
The participants at the "TVWeb" workshop expressed interest in W3C taking a more active role in the ongoing efforts of TV/Web integration, particularly since these efforts concern subsetting or extending some of the core W3C technologies (HTML, CSS, XML, ...).
This Interest Group has three missions:
The W3C process defines the general scope of an interest group as follows:
"An Interest Group brings together people who wish to evaluate potential Web technologies and policies. An Interest Group does not have the goals of a Working Group -- development of specifications or code. Instead, it serves as a forum to explore cooperation and exchange ideas.It is quite possible that an Interest Group's studies will lead to the creation of a Working Group, but this may not be known in advance nor is it guaranteed."
The following list of topics is based on discussions at the W3C workshop on "Television and the Web". Additional topics may be added during the lifetime of the Interest Group, if there is enough interest.
A first important mission of the TVWeb IG is to coordinate with efforts in other TV standardization groups, avoiding duplication of effort and fragmentation of the Web by incompatible standards.
In the television community, there is a desire to adapt certain W3C specifications before using them in TVWeb applications. This means that only a limited set of features of these specifications may be supported, or that new, TV-specific features are added to these specifications. This requires that some members of the Interest Group represent TV-specific interests in the HTML- and CSS working groups.
A new URL scheme is needed to address content that is broadcast in a TV channel. This requires to study and, potentially, harmonize existing proposals for tv-related URLs. The review must take the results URL registration Working Group in the IETF of the into account. The idea is to review the existing approaches within the W3C TV IG, after which they will be proposed to the IETF, in order to become standards-tracks RFCs, similar to other URL schemes (mailto:, ...).
The previous TVWeb Interest Group produced a W3C Note entitled "TV Broadcast URI Schemes Requirements", which should also be taken into account.
The following work items have been suggested at the W3C workshop on "Television and the Web". They are listed in no particular order. It depends on whether there is sufficient interest and commitment within the group to pursue them:
This Interest Group is scheduled for one year, from end of January 2000 to end of January 2001.
The Interest Group has fulfilled its mission if it succeeds in unifying the efforts of different TV standardization bodies for Web integration, and in avoiding a fragmentation of the Web.
By defaults, all documents developed by the IG are public.
Documents have a date at which they will be declared stable. Any remaining issues at this date will be described in the document, and not delay of making the document stable.
Documents that are prepared by the Interest Group will be published on the W3C site.
Documents that do not fulfill the criterion above (e.g. longer documents describing specific technical solutions brought up by one member of the IG) have to be submitted to W3C before they can be published on the W3C site.
This Interest Group does not have any deliverables, and consequently, no milestones.
To facilitate cooperation with the TV community, this charter and the archives of the Group's mailing list (www-tv@w3.org) will be open to the public.
The TVWeb IG will have to take into account technologies developed by other groups within W3C, and to advise them about the requirements of television. At the time of writing, the following ongoing W3C activities are concerned:
The following is a list of groups that are known or presumed to be working on or interested in integration of Television and Web technology, including pointers to the respective projects.
Organization whose goal is "to encourage the development of TV and related multimedia services based on the use of persistent local storage irrespective of the manner of service delivery".
The participants of
the "Television and the Web" IG
communicate via a public, archived mailing list, www-tv@w3.org (archive).
Teleconferences and face2face meetings to discuss particular issues may be
scheduled at the discretion of the chair.
Membership in the IG is open to the public. All subscribers to the mailing list www-tv@w3.org are IG members. There are no minimum requirements, neither in terms of expertise, not in terms of time dedicated to the group. If the IG decides to prepare a document, the editor(s) will be asked to commit to a certain percentage of their time.
The TVWeb IG will be chaired by a W3C Team member, which will also be W3C team contact. Resources of additional W3C team members may be required for some activities (review of "tv" URL schemes, TV-specific subsets of HTML and CSS, Authoring guidelines etc.).