My name's Steve Jolly and I'm a Research Engineer here at ±«Óãtv R&D, working at our "North Lab" in Manchester. I'm one of around fifteen engineers who make up the "Distribution: Application Layer" section, a cluster of projects themed around improving some of the technologies which actually present broadcasters' content to the consumer.
Within the R&D department, the section has something of a heritage of its own: many of my colleagues here have worked together for a number of years on various interactive television projects, such as . The three biggest digital television platforms in the UK (Freeview, Sky and Virgin Media) use incompatible formats for delivering "red button" interactive TV services, which can lead to inefficient use of developers' time if the same application has to be created separately for each one. The team spent a number of years looking at solutions to this problem, and ended up playing a major part in the development of the DVB . This is a language for describing interactive TV applications that can be converted automatically into the several different formats required by different platforms. Since the conversion is automatic, each application only has to be written once.
The team also worked on extending MHEG-5, the interactive TV format used on Freeview and Freesat, to allow audio, video and interactive TV applications to be "pushed" by a broadcaster to digital video recorders (DVRs) in consumers' homes. The user could then select from this pre-recorded content in addition to the programmes that they had selected for recording themselves.
In 2006 and 2007 the team helped run a trial of this technology, in which 250 homes were provided with specially modified DVRs. These gave them access to a "catch-up" service, in which programmes selected by the ±«Óãtv were automatically downloaded to a reserved area of the DVR's hard disk, and made available to the trialists on demand. The same trial also explored the possibilities of the technology for enhancing interactive applications with rich media components downloaded to the DVR well in advance. For example, an interactive quiz game was written incorporating video clips of the quizmaster asking the questions - something that sounds simple but which is surprisingly hard to do with conventional interactive TV technologies. Feedback from the trial was positive, with participants reporting, amongst other things, that the "±«Óãtv recommended" programmes introduced them to things they wouldn't normally have watched.
An interactive quiz incorporating video "pushed" to the DVR in advance using the MHEG-5 extensions developed by ±«Óãtv R&D.
The work of the section today covers a much wider range of projects. For example, there's a small but enthusiastic team looking at how the ±«Óãtv could make better use of mobile phones, and not just as devices to watch television programmes or listen to the radio on. I'm a part of this team, although my current project (described below) is a bit more general. My colleague Jerry Kramskoy wrote a post on the Internet Blog a little while back talking about some of our aspirations in this area.
A couple of us are also involved in the "Wombile" project: mostly in our own time we've written a basic platform for multiplayer mobile games, and a few games on top of it. My colleague Matt Hammond and I also wrote about that on the Internet Blog back in June.
There's another project in the section looking at the energy efficiency of broadcasting. Obviously there are environmental issues here that the ±«Óãtv takes very seriously, but saving energy saves money, too. R&D engineers also need to be aware of our impact on consumers. We don't design the devices that people buy in the shops, but we do design some of the technologies and components inside them. Energy efficiency is therefore one of the things we bear in mind when we work on technologies that could find their way into people's homes. Not only does doing so reduce carbon emissions and save consumers money, it also helps the companies that make televisions and set-top boxes meet ever-stricter environmental regulations.
Unsurprisingly, I'm particularly excited by my own work: a colleague and I are designing a web API that would allow network-connected set-top boxes (and similar devices, such as internet radios) to be accessed and controlled by other devices on the home network. The implications of that go far beyond being able to control the telly from your PC or mobile phone, although that alone would be both cool and useful. The most important thing we want to enable is the development of user interfaces that are completely independent of the set-top box's built-in interface, optimised for use by people with specific disabilities or impairments.
Take blind people, for example. They're at a disadvantage when it comes to finding a conventional remote control in the first place, and most televisions and set-top boxes give you only visual feedback when you press the remote control's buttons, which clearly isn't a lot of use if you can't see it. It would be far better if a blind person's remote control was an app running on their mobile phone (which is likely to be within easy reach at all times), and if it could convey information about what the set-top box is doing by speaking to them.
A standard way to access set-top boxes via a local network would allow the development of this and many other innovative applications. Imagine if your mobile phone could find out what was recorded on your DVR, for example. It could then download mobile-size versions of the programmes you hadn't watched (or had only watched part of) for you to catch up with on your way to work, for example.
In addition to these new projects, the team still does important work on interactive television technologies. The ±«Óãtv iPlayer deployment on Freesat announced recently by uses further MHEG extensions developed by the team in partnership with the , for example. The team continues to carry out research in this area, and hopefully television viewers will continue to benefit from it, in terms of useful new services from the ±«Óãtv and other broadcasters, and cost-effective creation of content.
Over the coming months we'll be bringing you more detail on these projects as they reach important milestones, and we'd love to hear back from you the thoughts and ideas that they inspire.
[Ed: Our thanks to Steve Jolly for this post- the first of a series of round ups from the various research sections of R&D. Do let us know which areas you'd like to hear more about and if you have any questions about the subjects raised by Steve just pop them in the comments]