Image Processing Reference
In-Depth Information
Going back to watching TV the old way is unthinkable after use of a TiVo for any
length of time. This will easily become the dominant way to watch TV. There is specula-
tion that TiVo has some very good ideas being prepared for rollout in the future. So far,
they have already innovated some very interesting product enhancements.
39.11.1
Program Delivery Control
Program Delivery Control (PDC) was introduced in order to tell a video recorder when to
start and stop recording a program. It is available in the United Kingdom and on some
European broadcast services.
Not all broadcasters have deployed the necessary equipment to support this and
some are not always reliable regarding the timely nature that is required for this to be use-
ful. Nevertheless, PDC does provide a useful mechanism for triggering an encode process
if the information can be captured at ingest time. The PDC code is broadcast approxi-
mately once every second during the program and contains a program identification code,
which the VCR looks for.
39.11.2
TV-Anytime
TV-Anytime is a standard that has been developed by manufacturers and broadcasters in
order to describe a subset of the metadata associated with a TV program. This subset is
one that would be useful in creating an Electronic Program Guide (EPG) and embodies
what is required to produce a satisfactory PVR or DVR experience for the end user.
The core of the standard revolves around the description of a CRID (Content
Referencing Identifier), which uniquely identifies an item of content. That item might be a
program, series of programs or even a segment of a program. Using publicly available
metadata sources, your PVR would enquire through a search engine for CRIDs that match
a particular query. That might be a program name or other descriptive information about
genre or mood. Having obtained a CRID (or possibly several CRIDs), the PVR resolves
them to discover the location of the program. That location might be an URL on the
Internet or it might be a date, time, and channel number on a broadcast service. The PVR
makes the necessary arrangements to obtain the program when it is available.
39.12
Metadata
Metadata preparation is becoming increasingly important as part of the workflow process.
This will let customers find your content with publicly available metadata that is served
from index repositories placed around the edge of the Internet.
TV-Anytime Forum: http://www.tv-anytime.org/
Digital Television Group (DTG): http://www.dtg.org.uk/
Digital Terrestrial Action Group (DigiTAG): http://www.digitag.org.uk/
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