Active-TV Technology for iPhone and iPod touch

Navigate YouTube

Navigate YouTube available at iTunes App Sore

An easy to use iPhone and iPod touch App that enables both new and advanced YouTube users to get the best from YouTube.

Browse video Standard Feeds, Categories, Channels and Playlists. Then organize new videos into your own favorites and playlists. Make playlists private or public. Subscribe to other user's playlists and video collections for future viewing. Subscribe to videos matching search-words.

Search for new videos tagged for your language or geographical region, using local keyboard. Explore for new videos via easy switching of user ID to the owner of interesting videos - then explore their world.

All actions are kept in sync with PC, Mac or Apple-TV access to YouTube. Available at Apple App Store.

A press release from the recently formed organization to promote MHEG, IMPALA, provides some impressive Spanish market data in support of its objective.

MHEG (Multimedia and Hypermedia Experts Group) is a standard requirement in UK DTT Set-Top Boxes (Digital Terrestrial Transmission – DVB-t). Use of MHEG technology is also spreading to other markets.

MHP (or OCAP in is US form) makes use of more complex Java-based technology. This results in a more expensive STB. Applications built to the MHP format can be more complex than MHEG media applications, but the additional STB cost has met with considerable consumer resistance.

The active-TV technology approach supports even more complex applications than MHP, but avoids the extra STB cost by using the computational resources of a home networked PC or laptop. This can be mostly invisible to the PC user. A laptop user can be accessing the PC-web while a TV “user” uses the hone network to simultaneously access TV-web applications. Active-TV technology result in a different set of user trade-offs; But importantly, the cost of the STB is little affected.

MHEG and MHP technology are applied in “closed” STB systems. They normally don’t require or support internet connection. They were developed before widespread video sharing on popular PC-web sites. They were not intended to be bring the openness of PC-web video sharing to the TV via a TV-web-channel. This is achieved with active-TV technology. MHP emerged in the mid 90s as a means for 'closed system" broadcaster to produce the same TV user interface across STBs supplied from multiple vendors.

In the last quarter of 2006 in Spain, 437,000 DTT receivers (set-top boxes, integrated TVs and PC-enabled DTT cards) were sold, but only 514 were MHP-enabled. (Source: the DTT Association, Impulsa TDT). The main reason seems to be that MHP set-top boxes are significantly more expensive, costing from €120 or more, compared to around €50 or less for standard receivers.

For comparison a UK DTT set-top box including MHEG-5 middleware costs around €50. Overall, there are more than 3.3 million DTT boxes in the Spanish market, of which 2.7 million were sold in 2006. The very low penetration of MHP-enabled receivers in Spain and other countries makes it very difficult for broadcasters to build any viable commercial business models for interactive services.

Navigate YouTube

Free Windows download

Want to see how it Active-TV Technology for the PC looks on a TV, then downloadthe PC emulation of TV operation. D-Link's site also includes active-TV technlogy support for the DSM-520. (Windows XP or MCE). Navigation is via the left-right arrows and F12 is used for 'back'. The bundle uses an easily changed example menu system.

Active-TV technology enables the Set-Top Box (STB) or TV to display TV-web with the same universal access and opportunity available to PC with PC-web.

Active-TV technlogy uses the same PC browser to process PC-web and TV-web pages, but a browser plug-in sends the TV-web image to a networked thin-client for display on TV.

A networked home PC or laptop computer which assits with formating the TV-web image, is known as an Extended-PC.

Video can be streamed directly to the STB or TV; or it can pass througth the ExtendedPC, where it may be reformated. The video encoding format (CODEC) may be changed (transcoded) by the Extended-PC to accomidate STB or TV capabilities.

Build a TV-web channel

A networked PC and TV supporting Active-TV Technology enables viewing of TV-websites. Download a free TV-web channel below. They can be reused when constructing a new channel. Documentation is also available. Make sure all files (such as C:\Program Files\Common Files\TV-Websites) have permission for all Users to access.