We are pleased to release more widely some broadcast streams and other materials, some of which use a new standard for conveying a timeline in a broadcast stream called TEMI. The purpose is to help manufacturers verify the functions of HbbTV 2 devices that allow TV applications and companion screen services to synchronise precisely with a programme or channel that is being watched on the TV.
Working with industry on conformance testing is an essential part of taking technical standards through to devices that end up in people’s homes. If this is not done then there is no way to know if our apps, internet services and broadcasts will correctly work on your TV, smartphone or tablet.The HbbTV Association is continuing to develop its own suite of tests for HbbTV 2. Their first release was announced at the end of 2016 and more will follow. We have helped to define and review many of the tests, particularly for features such as companion screen synchronisation and adaptive streaming. Separately to the HbbTV test suite, we are also making available some materials of our own. These resources are available for use by manufacturers to help debug their implementations of the HbbTV 2 and DVB companion synchronisation (DVB CSS) standards.
Our materials are complementary to the HbbTV test suite. The HbbTV test suite is designed to allow automated running of tests to verify conformance, producing a simple “pass” or “fail” answer. By contrast, our streams are designed to be more of an aid to development and debugging work. Also, the HbbTV tests aim to cover features one at a time and will not always reflect the way in which features are used together, in a particular country or by a particular organisation. Finally, our streams carry UK-specific metadata and aim to cover the scenarios that are of particular interest to us.
What have we released?
One set of streams is for testing how a timeline can be carried in a broadcast. MPEG has only recently defined a way to do this. It is known as TEMI and is included in DVB CSS. These streams contain a variety of TEMI timelines, and include special cases that a TV might encounter, such as gaps in the timeline data. Another test stream carries the URL for a cloud server, called the Material Resolution Service or MRS, that the companion application needs to communicate with to translate between a simple timeline for a TV channel and an accurate timeline for individual programmes or trailers. We demonstrated this recently at TV Connect 2017.The various tools we have released as Open Source will also help the industry test and debug their implementations.We hope to make additional materials available in the future, so keep checking for more!
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Broadcast and Connected Systems section
Broadcast & Connected Systems primarily focuses on how BBC content reaches our viewers through broadcast and Internet delivery. This involves the whole broadcast chain from playout, through coding and distribution to consumption on the end-user's device. Our work typically covers a period from now through to 3 years out from deployment.
