tvasystem

WG System, Transport & Content Referencing

The WG System, Transport and Content Referencing was responsible for the total architecture and consistency of the TV-Anytime System. The basic goal of the group was to ensure that working TV-Anytime systems can be build using the TV-Anytime tools.

The group used different means to achieve that goal:

 

• Technical Plenary (TP): The group prepared and hosted the TP of the TV-Anytime Forum where all the technical working groups meet and discuss the major cross group and hot issues.
• The WG published the ‘white papers’ of the TV-Anytime Forum and identified, next to the behaviour of TV-Anytime tools in a system, also potential other tools that were needed to buid a working system.

The WG’s mandate also included defining requirements on the Lower Layer Transport needed for correct operation of the TV-Anytime System. These requirements would enable organisations like the DVB, ATSC, ARIB and others to implement TV-Anytime in their environment.

The purpose of Content Referencing is to allow acquisition of a specific instance of a specific item of content. For example, if a consumer sees an announcement saying "there will be a new series of murder mysteries soon", they may want to instruct their Personal Video Recorder (PVR) to record the whole series, but cannot since they do not know when the episodes are going to be broadcast. In fact, the broadcaster may not know yet either.

To provide the capability desired by the consumer, the ability is needed to refer to content (in this example a series of programs) independent of its location, whether that location is on a particular broadcast channel on some date and time, or on a file server connected to Internet, or wherever.

The TV Anytime Content Referencing Specification provides a location independent reference (called a CRID) and the process by which this CRID is resolved into times and locations where the content can be found.