OReilly Emerging Technology Conference

1
Taking Back Television
OReilly Emerging Technology Conference March
14-17, 2005
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The Project for Open Source Media
Tim Halle
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What is television ?
A collection of transports
A format involving synced picture and sound
An activity
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What is television ?
A collection of transports
A format involving synced picture and sound
An activity
Photoshop (or Gimp)
Watching Movies
Couch
Desk
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What do I mean by taking back ?
Opening up distribution channels to any
interested party
Allowing for the creation of next generation
content
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Access issues
Concepts Airwaves as public trust Multiplicity
of voices
Solutions Public Broadcasting Cable must carry
laws Public access Low Power Licensees
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Development issues
Access to Dev environment Lack of standards
Need to cut cable operator in on revenues
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Reverse engineering the set top box
Hardware components Low end PC, Tuner card, NTSC
output
Software Linux Mozilla Mplayer and Mplayer
Plugin DCR (Digital Content Recorder)
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The Electronic Program Guide
Content and transport agnostic User
controlled Open to any interested party
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Advanced Functionality

• Problems with Traditional ITV
• Latency
• Slow modem or back channel
• Weak browsers
• Interrupting viewer experience
• Trigger issues

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Advanced Functionality

• Fixes
• Latency and Slow modem or back channel
• Broadband and Pre Caching
• Weak browsers
• Mozilla
• Interrupting viewer experience
• PVR pause functionality
• Blocked triggers
• Timecode, Closed caption track, XDS

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DEMO TIME
13
QUESTIONS