FAO Devs: TV Application Layer

[msmith 6]

Hi all,

 

It looks like there is a lot of interest in creating applications for smart TVs.  It would definitely be worth you taking a look at TAL (http://fmtvp.github.io/tal/) as a way of writing the application once and it working on many devices (televisions, bluray players etc.).  It's currently used for the BBC iPlayer, BBC Sport and BBC Connected Red Button applications amongst others.

 

Adding support for another device to an existing application is just a matter of putting together a config file to define which features it can support and pointing to it when the device is detected (via useragent string, URL or whatever you like).

 

Thanks

[ebr 16169]

Very interesting.  As I understand the about page, this actually builds a web application that would be accessed via the TVs browser as opposed to an app that would appear in the TVs applications pages.  Correct?

[msmith 6]

Not quite, a lot of TV applications are actually just running in a browser with no chrome.  You would still need to create a launcher app to open the page but once that's done, any changes are just done in the web application.

 

App mode will have different controls to the standard browser mode - in app mode, there's no cursor, keyboards etc. so you need to hook onto the keypresses with javascript and call your navigation functions depending on which button was pressed.

 

The problem is that there are many different browsers in use, all supporting different things or having different levels of performance - plus the key press codes are different with them all!  With TAL you'll build your app and then make configs for devices you want to support, specifying what they can and can't do (there are already a lot included).  It also has loads of components included that you'd be using in a mediabrowser client (video player, scrolling carousels for navigation etc.) since it's made primarily for VOD services.

[ebr 16169]

Okay, so we would write a wrapper app targeted to the specific TV platform that just opens our html app in the TV's browser and then let it go from there.

 

Very interesting...

[Luke 42077]

Thanks, it looks interesting.

[Lee 212]

It does beg the question tho, why no w8 "metro" app? AND why are the WP iplayer apps shitty web wrappers??? Grrrrr

[ebr 16169]

@@msmith - since the app runs in the TV's browser, does this mean we are limited to stereo audio?

[Luke 42077]

Since it's a browser built by the the tv vendors i'm guessing no, but that's a good question.

[msmith 6]

I'll find out whether or not anyone has played with 5.1 etc. before and let you know.  There's nothing in the config files regarding 5.1 but I wouldn't be surprised if some BD players could do it.

​

​I suppose the best way to work with it would be to have a preferences page in the application and let users run a 5.1 test before allowing them to turn on 5.1 audio.  You could then save the preference in persistant storage on the device.

[msmith 6]

One thing that you will need to think about is how you'd have the launcher apps work - i.e. which URL would they go to?  I doubt most people would want to run their own DNS server at home so it may be a matter of taking them to an app on mediabrowser.tv which then (after login) redirects them to an address specified in their profile.

​

​It's quite a lot of work to get this kind of thing going initially but it could easily pay off in the long run when you only have to write a config file instead of an entire application for a new model.  Smart TV apps are really going to be the big thing soon since the devices are now of a good enough spec to work smoothly, a lot of the lower range sets are coming with wifi built in so that people actually connect them and there's the fact that there is nothing more convenient or better to watch your television programmes on.

[ebr 16169]

Setting a preference isn't a big issue - the problem would be, if you are using standard html5 video, I don't think you can do anything except stereo.

 

What I'm hearing you say is that your players all only do stereo sound.  Is that correct?

[Luke 42077]

in html5 the codec and format support is up to each browser to decide. it is only the document structure that is defined.

[msmith 6]

I've had a word with someone and 5.1 has been tried in the past but as expected, it has very mixed results.  Some TVs will pass it through to an external receiver if present but downmix to stereo if not, some will only downmix to stereo, some will just play the L&R channels and some will just not play it.  One model would only work if you changed the spdif settings back to auto each time you were in the application.  Both AC3 and AAC were tried. 

 

As Luke says though, it's a browser thing rather than application.

[ebr 16169]

Well, that's a bummer.  Thanks for checking.

[msmith 6]

It's just how things are unfortunately, you have the same problems on all platforms.  There's nothing wrong with providing stereo by default and letting people check whether or not their kit supports surround sound.

 

Maybe it's possible to use DLNA DMC functionality to push the video to the TV when it's selected...