HD programming/IPTV through BD players?

[Carl B]

There seems to be an effort afoot in S Korea, soon to push into the Unites States, that may result in BD profile 2.0 players serving as HD programming set-top boxes through the use of a certain middleware program able to run within the players' Java environment. Worth noting definitely that the PS3 would be able to take advantage of this software as well.

It will be interesting to see what happens on that front, but it would be a great addition to functionality (especially on the console) if it came to fruition.

Vague-ish details here: http://www.multichannel.com/article/CA6558200.html?nid=4262

 

[Scott_Arm]

This is definitely a smart idea. I think the 360 is supposed to get IPTV functionality, but only for providers using Microsoft IPTV, which would be AT&T in the USA and I'm not sure of anyone else.

I've never looked into standards for IPTV. As long as the BD/PS3 player could be used on just about any IPTV service it would be fantastic. If it's provider specific like the 360s rumored functionality, then it would kind of suck, except for the lucky few.

 

[Carl B]

I've never looked into standards for IPTV. As long as the BD/PS3 player could be used on just about any IPTV service it would be fantastic. If it's provider specific like the 360s rumored functionality, then it would kind of suck, except for the lucky few.

It wouldn't be provider specific per se so much as an entirely new service unto itself. So, it would still be a walled garden of sorts. But from where I'm sitting that's still a decent upgrade in functionality vs not having it at all!

 

[Scott_Arm]

It wouldn't be provider specific per se so much as an entirely new service unto itself. So, it would still be a walled garden of sorts. But from where I'm sitting that's still a decent upgrade in functionality vs not having it at all!

That's true. So there would have to be some changes at the provider end. These may not work on an existing IPTV network?

 

[patsu]

OCAP (tru2way) cable set boxes are being deployed as we speak. These are similar to BD-Live players in the sense that they both include Java VM. Near the beginning of this year, they have already deployed 600,000 true2way units in US. It should be much more now.

Sony was the only major manufacturer who refused to jump onto the bandwagon because -- I was told -- they complained that the OCAP specification was controlled totally by the cable operators. This has changed last month. Sony can now make HD TV with built-in tru2way capabiility (no settop box needed).

Incidentally, I found a Java forum dedicated to tru2way/OCAP and BD-J development:
https://hdcookbook.dev.java.net/

Welcome to the HD Cookbook source repository! This is an open, collaborative place to gather useful code for Blu-ray Java, and other GEM terminal specifications like MHP, OCAP, and GEM-IPTV. If you have something you'd like to contribute, please do! All we ask is a little bit of coordination on package names, and a few simple formatting conventions. Here's what we have so far:

* Animator, a lightweight animation package. This package manages the animation loop, drawing optimization, and double-buffering for a Java Xlet, such as a BD-J application.
* GRIN - a framework for Graphical Interactivity. This framework uses the animation framework described above, and adds a "scene graph" to it. A scene graph is the thing that, at runtime, represents what gets built with a visual design tool. It's a tree of objects that represents drawing operations, much like an HTML document or a Flash file.
* A set of three Blu-ray Java xlets that can be used in a BD disc image. There's a main menu xlet that uses GRIN in the package com.hdcookbook.bookmenu.menu, a game called "Gun Bunny" in com.hdcookbook.gunbunny, and a "monitor xlet" to control the other apps in com.hdcookbook.bookmenu.monitor.
* A BD disc image with A/V assets, ready to have the three xlets described above added to it. Put these together on a BD-RE disc, and you have a disc image you can play on an off-the-shelf Blu-Ray Disc player, like the PS/3!
* A tool to build a Blu-ray Disc BDJO file in net.java.bd.tools.bdjo, under the tools directory.
* A set of security tools that generate certificates, sign Blu-ray Disc jar files, sign Binding Unit Manifest File (BUMF), and sign jars with file credentials in net.java.bd.tools.security, under the tools directory.
* A set of ant scripts you can use to build the tools and the xlets.
* A set of shell scripts you can use as a starting point to set up a build environment. These can be found in the "scripts" directory.
This code is being used in production Blu-ray titles, including major studio releases.

By assembling the parts available here, you can build your own Blu-ray disc image, and burn it to a rewritable BD-RE disc. This disc can be played almost all consumer players, including the PS/3. You can also modify the BD-J code provided, or write your own. Soon, we hope to assmeble enough tools so you can build a disc image from scratch: We'd like it to be possible for folks who are interested to shoot their own HD footage, edit it with something like Final Cut, build the disc data structures, write code for the interactivity, and emerge with a BD-RE disc that will work on a normal Blu-ray player.

So you can do open source development and homebrew on Blu-ray players too.