Report: W3C/Keio “Web App on TV” Developer Meetup in Tokyo [Initial Draft]

Overview

The W3C/Keio held the First "Web Apps on TV" Developer Meetup - on March 16-17 in Koto, Tokyo, Japan hosted by Fuji Television. The main focus of the first meetup was to gain developer's perspective on what we should standardize in W3C "after 5" for TV-like services, and how WPT, Web Platform Test, can help improve development processes of Web applications on TV-like devices. The meetup produced two measurable outcomes: a technical review note on the TV Control API CG works and a fork of WPT browser-based test runner that can run on TV-like devices with HTML5 browsers such as Hybridcast terminals.

Participants

The meetup had 85 attendees from key stakeholders including:

Web application developers
Hybridcast application developers
Television Broadcasters
Consumer electronics manufacturers
Browser vendors
Telecommunications companies
Cable television operators
Broadcasting equipment vendors
Research institutes
Standardization organizations

Executive Summary

The first day of the meetup was dedicated for input sessions including W3C updates on TV-related standards, overviews of latest Hybrid TV standards, and an introduction on the architecture of Firefox OS; The second day was the workshop and hands-on session: The participants, who are well-prepared with the input sessions on the previous day, quickly found and focused on important topics, some of which were tackled and even resolved by the end of the meetup.

The workshop and hands-on session on Day two had three tracks or break out sessions to maximize the outcome of the event: The track one was Improve W3C Standards for TV, the track two was Improve Web Platform Test for TV, and the track three was Write TV-like apps for Firefox OS on Open Web Board.

The track one created a mapping between the functional features of two Hybrid TV standards, HbbTV 2.0 and Hybridcast 2.0, and W3C TV-related standards. Among all the interesting features, the track one participants chose the TV Control API CG works as the work item during the workshop session: Reviewed the requirements and the editor's API draft, they made a note from the Hybridcast TV standard's viewpoint.

See the review note for the details.

The track two was divided into two sub-groups and worked on three issues: make the browser-based test runner runnable on Hybridcast terminals, discuss where and how we could build WPT into the Hybrid TV industry, and figure out what collaboration with other SDOs would be mutually beneficial.

See the track two note for the details.

The modified test runner, which is runnable on TV-like devices, was on a WPT fork and publicly available already. The participants made a rough consensus that, to maximize the benefit of WPT, TV manufactures as well as browser vendors should run WPT in their product development processes, publicly sharing the results of WPT will help improve interop of TV-like devices, and other SDOs could use WPT test harness and runners for their test suits, which would enable test user to organize multiple test suites related to HTML5 but from various SDOs.

The track three participants learned the architecture of Firefox OS including offline application packaging and security models through writing apps on Open Web Board and doing code-reading a pilot user interface for a TV-like service on Firefox OS.

Meetup Sessions and Tracks

Day One

10:00-18:00 Input Session
- W3C Web and TV standards [slides]
  - HTML WG
  - TV Control API
  - GGIE
  - Second Screen Presentation API
  - Mutlti-Device Synchronization
  - Media in-band resource
- W3C Web Platform Testing [slides]
- Web and Broadcasting
  - Hybridcast 2.0
  - HbbTV 2.0 [slides]
- Web on TV
  - Firefox OS [slides]
    - Open Web Board
  - Opera's HTML5 based middleware for TV-like devices
- Updates from Hybridcast 1.0 services
- Interop Lessons from Hybridcast 1.0
18:00-20:00 Netwoking

Day Two

10:00-11:00 Planning Session
- Track1: Improve W3C standards for TV [review note]
- Track2: Improve W3C Web Platform Testing for TV
- Track3: Write TV-like apps on Open Web Board
11:00-17:00 Workshop&Hands-on
- Track1: Improve W3C standards for TV
- Track2: Improve W3C Web Platform Testing for TV
- Track3: Write TV-like apps on Open Web Board
17:00-18:00 Wrap-Up