Use Case XML Channellist

Use Case: Using XML formalism to handle channels list

Submitter(s): MStar Semiconductor (JC Verdié),

Description:

high level description/overview of the goals of the use case

Provide a declarative approach to handle channels list in TV for web UI and/or application Usage

Schematic Illustration (devices involved, work flows, etc)

Implementation Examples (e.g. JS code snippets)

<dvb:channel id='chann1'>
             <name>ABC</name>
             <dvb:source>onid,pid,sid</dvb:source>
             <dvb:ait>
                   <application>http://wwww.appToLaunch.com
                   </application>
                   <state>signalled</state>
              </dvb:ait>
</dvb:channel>
<iptv:virtualChannel id='chann2'>
<name>ZDF</name>
<iptv:channel id=‘chann2hd’>
             <iptv:source>http://.../streamingHD/video.m3u</iptv:source>
</iptv:channel>
<iptv:channel id=‘chann2sd’>
             <iptv:source>http://.../streamingSD/video.m3u</iptv:source>
</iptv:channel>
</iptv:virtualChannel>

Need/justification:

Today, channel management is handled in HTML Apps using specific JavaScript API, home brew or fetched from other groups such as OIPF Channel management is by nature a declarative process which turns out to be managed in a fully procedural ways with lot of additional code and processing and sometimes a duplicate storage of data (middleware list of services and web front-end database backup or cache)

Explanation of benefit to ecosystem

Provide a standardised communication between tuner middleware (whether they are ISDB, DVB, ATSC or others would not be relevant).

Why were you not able to use only existing standards to accomplish this?

Existing standards only provide a procedural approach to this data management, implying a lot of additional code in both the browser and the middleware, and a lot of re-processing of data, while the inner nature of structure data in XML is pinpoint aligned with channel management needs.

What might you suggest could be standardized?

We are proposing the W3C to work on a standardised XML scheme to describe a channel list with all needed items such as (the following list is not comprehensive):

channel name
channel type : IP, DVB, ...
channel protocol : dvb triplet, rtsp, ...
channel access : which can be specialised depending on channel type (IP address , triplet, ...)
this is not a formalism presented here, as many channels will now include multiple access points (HD, SD, adaptive streaming, broadcast, ...)

Dependencies:

other use cases, proposals or other ongoing standardization activities which this use case is dependant on or related to

Using HTML Video tag to play broadcast video

Comments:

any relevant comment that is good to track related to this use case