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As you can see in the video, viewers are invited to enter a tag or username using the characters on their numerical keypad. The application then sends this string to a PHP script and in response receives a text file listing the twenty most recent photos that satisfy the query. The MHEG application can now obtain thumbnails for the twenty images directly from Flickr and display them on screen.

The Freeview colour palette is fairly limited and is nowhere near comprehensive enough to show full colour images, so when it came to displaying a large version of each image I chose not to let MHEG render it. Instead I used the hardware video decoder to show an MPEG-2 I-Frame ensuring a higher quality image. When the application needs to show a large photo it uses a PHP script to obtain a JPEG image from Flickr which it then converts into an I-Frame before returning it. As part of the conversion, the script scales the image so that it displays correctly on a widescreen television.

So hopefully you can see how standard web APIs can be used to create useful interactive television services. MHEG is not designed for number crunching or large amounts of string manipulation so it makes sense to implement these processes on a server. I look forward to seeing what the development community can do when the MHEG+ toolkit is released.

Notes:

The video was captured from a development receiver, not the Netgem box.
I used to help me with the Flickr API.
Fuzzyfelt is my (underused) Flickr account and appeared as the default option to speed up my testing.

Comments

The following comments were originally posted on the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖi Labs blog

At 3:25pm on 10 Jul 2008, FrankieRoberto wrote:

"In the near future we are going to see more TVs and set-top boxes which incorporate Ethernet ports."

Ethernet ports? Surely wi-fi tuners are the way to go now? Stretching an ethernet cable between your TV and your adsl router (which is next to a telephone socket) would be a pain in the arse.

At 4:27pm on 10 Jul 2008, Andrew Bowden wrote:

I agree - in my house, the router is upstairs, so connecting up a TV box and a router would be a right pain in the neck. I'd probably end up with some of those powerline ethernet things.

But for some reason, we've not really seen many wifi enabled boxes yet for some reason. Manufacturers keep going for ethernet. Maybe it's a cost thing - wifi can be cheap, but not as cheap as ethernet.

At 02:11am on 11 Jul 2008, sammyjayuk wrote:

Ooo, can a normal iPlayer load MHEG over the network?? I must admit that I never tried - I played a bit with the way it does HTML (I did once want to recreate the i-Bar), but wasn't aware it could do MHEG.

Plus, I never had a way to author MHEG - roll on MHEG+!

The i-Player now resides with my little sister - sounds like I'm gonna have to steal it back!

Sam

At 08:38am on 11 Jul 2008, fuzzyrich wrote:

On the subject of wi-fi....

I have found that wi-fi connections can be a little unreliable when trying to stream video content to a set-top box. Also the name set-top is a little misleading as they are often buried beneath the TV along with a pile of other AV equipment which impairs the wi-fi signal somewhat. However the real reason that boxes don't have wi-fi yet is the additional cost (hence higher retail price) to build in a feature that many people won't use. Also, the complication of providing a configuration screen in the UI - imagine entering your security key using the remote.

The Netgem iplayer....

We have a slightly modified firmware version but I believe you can load MHEG over the network on a standard version. I have a simple hello world app. which I can post a link to (when I've cleared it here) so you can test it out.

At 9:58pm on 11 Jul 2008, hpengwyn wrote:

Very nice but, er, why? Apart from 'because its there'. Could not one shove a web-browser in the set-top-box (much in the manner that WebTV did a mere 12 years ago), rather than having people having to learn another markup language. I know people like to learn new languages (extra marks if they are as bizarre as MHEG-5 - as in 'free the') but this seems a tragic waste of human ingenuity to me.

Next trick... installing Linux on a dead badger https://www.strangehorizons.com/2004/20040405/badger.shtml

At 1:20pm on 12 Jul 2008, fuzzyrich wrote:

Unfortunately I think you have missed the point. The intention was to demonstrate how easily an MHEG application could utilise content delivered over an IP connection. The viewer does not need to know whether content came from broadcast or IP and so does not have to clunk over into the IP only world by firing up a web browser.

Flickr happened to be an easy example to do quickly. If you look at the hacks from the Mashed event you'll see that the same tools were used to deliver a Twitter 'ticker' on TV.

At 4:18pm on 14 Jul 2008, st599_uk wrote:

The netgem does have a web browser.

But doesn't that require the end user to use 2 interfaces to get at a broadcast link?

At 6:01pm on 14 Jul 2008, fuzzyrich wrote:

On Freeview, when the viewer presses the red button they are usually treated to an application that has been delivered using broadcast capacity. Broadcast capacity is a limited and expensive resource so careful consideration is given to how it should be used.

By using the IP connection to deliver additional data we could potentially offer more personalised or deeper content. Using an IP connection through MHEG means we can blend two content sources (broadcast and IP). If we were to use a web browser for IP content and MHEG for broadcast applications there would be a noticeable clunk as we transitioned between the two presentation environments. Also, MHEG can control broadcast video but the web browser cannot so the latter removes you from the viewing experience.

At 7:43pm on 14 Jul 2008, hpengwyn wrote:

It wouldn't require 2 interfaces if you were to enhance the web browser to allow embedding of broadcast streams :-)

(PS, actually I find the red button stuff as a way of accessing extra content beyond the news / sport / entertainment stuf on permanent rotation rather irksome, I would far rather something said
'and on ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ 9 (or whatever) we have Grandstand Extra' rather than having to poke the red button to see if there is something on, it turns a flat structure into a hierarchical one, but I realise that even if the rest of the world thought my way there would probably be issues with tying up extra EPG entries for ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ5 through 10).

At 4:10pm on 15 Jul 2008, chris_fleming wrote:

I really like this; I think what you're saying is that these kind of features will lead to broadcasters being able to start to provide hybrid services. So if I had a set top box with an internet connection available. The ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ might be able to provide iPlayer over IP to my TV rather than having to use my PC, this is exciting because it breaks the broastcast -> TV link. It means that broadcasters can start to provide much more individal content over the IP connection.

If broadcasters were to start using these featutres, then I expect the set top box manufactureres (and TV manuafacturersw) may well start to produce set top boxes with with IP connection's built in, no doubt including wireless versions at a premium price. Although a lot of people will already have connections for X-Boxes or Playstations..

At 06:46am on 18 Jul 2008, brandonbutterworth wrote:

This is long running discussion we've had at ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Research and Innovation.

Following DTT and Freesat the thought is that we'd use MHEG for interactive content on new platforms including IPTV

From the Internet we'd expect to use web standards as the lack of a fixed platform has lead to rapid development of standards and capability. The constraints of STB hardware and lack of a keyboard/mouse have made it a poor user experience but devices like the Wii show this will be overcome.

The Netgem box has been used in a number of our projects, I've used it for ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Multicast (/multicast) and a demo ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ iPlayer STB. It does run the DTT MHEG apps we have on the multicast though changes are needed to make some apps work.

At 9:05pm on 06 Oct 2008, radio_listener wrote:

Will it be possible to execute one's own applications on a freesat-stb?
For example use the freesat-stb as a client for a mediaserver? To find and play x264 encoded files by utilizing an MHEG-application?