Fix for change in YouTube streaming

Very recently YouTube made an engineering modification to their service which changed access to their video. This caused the active-TV TV-web page for YouTube to stop working. We have determined a fix and included it in the new youtube_beta_18.zip file available from this blogsite.

This update is slightly slower initially accessing YouTube video; but we wanted to make a quick solution available for all those that have reported the problem. We will likely release a faster version later.

Receiving a Video Message at the TV

There have been a lot of web articles lately, such as “Social networkers want TV airtime”, discussing the demand for PC and mobile phone messaging to be supported at the living room TV. Some companies, such as Sky have indicated this is on their roadmap.

Video sharing and distribution sites already support sending messages between site users. For example, Youtube PC-website users who find a video they like can send a link to a Friend in their Contact List. This is done via the Send Video button which appears below the video display area – as shown below.

After clicking on Send Video, a Friend from the contact list is selected (daniel78746 for the example above), and the PC keyboard is used to type in a message to accompany the Video.

The YouTube developers’ API supports receiving Video Messages. But to access messages the user must first enter their account password. The YouTube TV-website supported by active-TV enabled TVs and STBs, such as the D-link DSM-520, has been extended to enable a YouTube password to be entered using the TV remote. The TV menu now includes the menu option “Messages in Inbox” which is used to access message at the living room TV screen.

The example above shows that a Video Message was received from YouTube user “alt34ab”. The message text typed in at the sender’s keyboard, now appears on the receivers TV. In the menu entry just below the message is the video link associated with the Video Message. This is shown below.



Using the YouTube supported scheme, it is possible to send a message from a cell phone or PC to a TV. With some more development it will be possible to send messages from the TV to another TV, PC or cell phone. A beta version of the TV-website will be made available for testing at this blog-site. Look for the youtube_beta zip file with version 17 or higher.

On the right side of the TV screen is the “related” icon which moves up and down the screen, positioned next to the currently selected menu entry. Pushing “enter” on the TV remote while highlighting the “related” icon, causes the menu to be filled with video entries which relate to the current entry. For example, the Video Message delivers a link to the “Rory Gallagher ..” video. Using the “related” button provides a list of videos which Youtube report to be related. See the example TV screen below.

Feedback, corrections and comments welcome. Please make contact if you would like more information about TV-website development.
Daniel Mann

Adding Live Internet TV streams to my Living Room TV

The prior blog entry “Build your own TV channel from torrent-delivered video sources” did not adequately cover the details of adding more than torrent formatted video sources, such as Live TV streams.

As explained, a users’ torrentSites.xml file describes the video feeds to be presented at the TV. Each <item> in the torrentSites.xml typically contains the url address of an XML-formatted RSS video feed. But it can alternatively contain the address of an XML-formatted listing of Live TV channels. Assume the <item> below is included in the torrentSites.xml file.

<item>
<title>My Video Feeds</title>
<description>Video feeds defined in my PC file myVideoFeeds.xml</description>
<link>myVideoFeeds.xml</link>
<image> </image>

</item>

Following the torrentSites.xml entry above leads to the myVideoFeeds.xml file; which is also, given the example file address, located on your networked PC and not on a networked server. Below is an example of myVideoFeeds.xml.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<rss>
<channel>

<item>
<title>BFM TV, France </title>
<description>French 24-hour television news channel, defined in my PC file myVideoFeeds.xml</description>
<enclosure url="mms://vipmms9.yacast.net/bfm_bfmtv" type="application/video" />
<image>http://www.satgok.be/sat/images/chaine/bfmtv.gif</image>
<pubDate>Live TV</pubDate>
</item>

<item>
<title>Vesti 24, Russia</title>
<description>Russian TV feed, defined in my PC file myVideoFeeds.xml</description>
<enclosure url="mms://video.rfn.ru/vesti_24" type="application/video" />
<image>http://s3.amazonaws.com/mogulus-channel-logos/vesti-small.png</image>
<pubDate>Live TV</pubDate>
</item>

</channel>
</rss>

The torrentSites.xml has a menu entry entitled “My Video Feeds”. This appears on the left-side TV menu, as shown below. The myVideoFeeds.xml file contains two <item> entries; these now appear in the right-side TV menu. By adding your own entries into your myVideoFeeds.xml you can build a menu enabling access to a video feed you have obtained the address for.



To further demonstrate the system I have build a menu item "Live TV Streams" which is currently streaming Live TV from the following internet channels: BFM TV, France; Reel Good TV, USA; Vesti 24, Russia; TV RB, Russia; RTR Planeta, Russia; Canal 7, Sweden; 4E TV, Greece; ERT 3, Greece; Folketing TV, Denmark; Omega TV, Netherlands; Omroep Zeeland, Netherlands; Teleradioerre, Italy ; Tiziana Sat, Italy; Yomiuri News, Japan; FMI, Japan; TV Argent, Canada. More channels can be easily added.

Given this ease and flexibility, it is easy to see how the sytstem is well suited for deliverying foreign language TV channels to the living room TV -- via the internet. A beta version of the above TV-website is available for download and testing from this blogsite (see utorrent_beta.zip under Free TV-web Channels).
Daniel Mann

Build your own TV channel from torrent-delivered video

There are plenty of sources of torrent-delivered video available, but how can a person with little or no engineering skills get these videos delivered directly to their living room TV? Well, it is now possible to do so with a new configurable TV-website that is viewable on any Active-TV-enabled networked TVs, such as those TVs connected to a D-link DSM-520.

For those among you who have the right to download video torrent files (i.e. peer-to-peer sharing, P2P), and find it convenient to view and select available torrents from the TV rather than the PC, the new TV-website makes it possible to select and start a torrent, monitor its progress, and finally watch the downloaded video – all from the TV. Hence, there is no need for a PC keyboard to browse and select a particular torrent, let alone attach a PC to the TV.

As discussed in a previous blog article, when accessing P2P video, the system relies on a networked-PC using uTorrent to assist the TV with torrenting. In other words, the TV UI remotely drives the PC’s uTorrent engine.

Available videos are listed at the TV according to an XML configuration file, 'torrentSites.xml'. A user must build their own torrentSites.xml file which is stored on their PC. An example is provided to help with understanding the layout and syntax.

Possibly following a broadcaster trend, Norwegian Broadcaster (NRK) makes programmes available for free via torrent distribution. US channel Democracy Now! also distributes programmes via torrent. Canada’s public broadcaster CBC distributes the “Canada's Next Great Prime Minister” shown. Partnering with CBC, the bittorrent aggregation site Mininova supplies a DRM-free copy of the video torrent file. The required torrentSites.xml entry for the NRK and DN! video is below:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<rss>
<channel>

<item>
<title>Norwegian (NRK)</title>
<description>Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK) Nordkalotten 365, defined in my PC file torrentSites.xml</description> <link>http://nrkbeta.no/torrent/monsen/nordkalotten365.rss</link> <image>http://www.nrkbeta.no/torrent/monsen/nrklogo.png</image>
</item>

<item>
<title>Democracy Now!</title>
<description>Democracy Now!, defined in my PC file torrentSites.xml</description>
<link>http://ewheel.democracynow.org/rss.xml</link>
<image>http://images.democracynow.org/dn-logo-for-podcast.png</image>
</item>

</channel>
</rss>

The two entries or items in the above torrentSites.xml file, appear in the TV menu as shown in the screen-shots below. They are shown on the left-side menu.



Torrent sites make their torrents available via lists which are distributed via RSS. These lists generally conform to a similar format. This similarity enables torrenting tools such as uTorrent to generally access RSS data. Similarly, the TV-website has managed to “read” the RSS address provided by the XML <link> element and so lists the available torrents on the right-side menu.



Some torrent distribution sites support searching for a particular torrent. This requires search-words to be passed to the torrent site. To support searching, an XML entry such as the example below must be used.

<link search="MATCH" >http://www.site_address/MATCH/more_address</link>

The use of "search=" in the <link> entry indicates that a pop-up keyboard will be used when the menu entry is selected. This enables search-words, such as "election news" to be entered on the TV screen. The keywords replace the XML token “MATCH” in the formation of an RSS url which will list, in our case, only torrents containing the name “election news”.

Before the TV can “talk” to the uTorrent engine running on the PC, it is important that they both be configured correctly; set-up the PC first. As previously described, uTorrent “Preferences” must be set to support an “incoming connection”.



Conveniently for us, the uTorrent Web UI interface enables remote login to the torrent PC. The remote login ID must be set to “active-TV” with password “pass”. This is the initial password used by the TV-website, but it can be changed to your own preference; however, make sure the ID on the uTorrent TV-web is set to the same password. Use the TV menu entry “Change uTorrent Pass” to accomplish this – change the PC-side password first.



Before using the “My Active uTorrents” TV menu entry, make sure the PC and TV-side uTorrent passwords are set correctly. The “My Active uTorrents” enables reviewing the progress of currently active torrents. When download reaches 100%, the video can be viewed on the TV by simply using the TV’s IR remote to click on the torrents menu entry.



For convenience, the TV UI reports if a video has already been viewed after prior download completion. This helps keep a track of what you have been watching,



The uTorrent TV-website is very flexible given the ability for a user to define their own torrentSites.xml. Note that it is entirely the responsibility of the user to ensure that they have the legal right to access any video or content made available by the torrentSites.xml file they make use of. For more information about a users’ copyright responsibilities and DSM-520 operaton, please see the D-link support site. A beta version of the above TV-website is available for download and testing from this blogsite (see Free TV-web Channels). (Also see newer blog entry "Adding Live TV streams to my living room TV".)
Daniel Mann

Combining cell phone and TV UI support for internet video

As mobile phones grow increasingly sophisticated and are open to third-party applications and services, they can be used for both productivity and entertainment. If the screen is large enough, they are a convenient platform for viewing Internet-based video. They can also serve as a device to coordinate the storing and forwarding of video, both throughout and from the home. That is to say, a mobile device can be made to communicate directly with a home-based video devices, such as a networked TV. These innovations are all due to the flexibility of Web 2.0 technologies, which which interconnects the User Interfaces (UIs) appearing on the cell phone, PC and TV.

Below is a screen shot showing an Active-TV Technology UI for YouTube video.

In collaboration with CoreCodec, Active-TV Technology is developing mobie phone applications to coordinate the viewing of of video suitable for networked-enabled TVs. CoreCodec is known for its CorePlayer, which supports “multimedia content on your desktop, mobile phone, portable media player, PDA, GPS, or convergence device”. CorePlayer is widely used across the cell phone industry.

Here are more cell phone screen images of the Lua-based prototype for YouTube. A number of cell phones now support YouTube video and these early developments are just a proof-of-concept of this new technology.

The next step is to show how the phone, TV and PC UIs can interoperate to support social networking, sharing, navigating, organizing and discovering video and audio entertainment, from both Internet-broadcast and conventional-broadcast TV media.

Here is a link to a BBC-Microsoft TV example, shown in the YouTube window below, where social networking and instant messaging features are combined to enable video recommendations. Further prototypes will be available soon.


Daniel Mann

Anouncing a UI for an internet TV using Lua run-time support

Active-TV Technology now offers an internet TV UI based on the Lua language and run-time support routines from CoreCodec. The Lua scripting tools currently enable a UI with abilities somewhere between MHEG5 and Adobe Flash.

CoreCodec is known for its CorePlayer, which supports “multimedia content on your desktop, mobile phone, portable media player, PDA, GPS, or convergence device”. It is widely used in the cell phone industry. Now, CoreCodec are in the process of retargeting their new Lua run-time environment to customers’ TV system-on a chip (Soc). They have already provided Lua run-time support for BroadQ’s Sony Playstation 2 project. Lua has particularly light-weight support requirements, and is popular in the video game industry.

Adobe’s Flash is widely used in the PC industry, when building web interface applications. Its availability for TV UI development would be greatly appreciated; given its productivity, capability and familiarity. The new CE3100 TV SOC from Intel has an advantage when supporting Flash due to the CE3100’s X86 processor core. Other, possibly lower cost TV SoC, will have a harder time supporting Flash. Using Lua may be the answer to competing with the CE3100.

Below is a TV screen image of the current Lua-based YouTube interface.
Daniel Mann