[opendtv] Re: IP-Based TV Will Revolutionize Entertainment

On Fri, 2005-04-29 at 18:30 -0400, Manfredi, Albert E wrote:
> > Is this is a paid advertisement, because everyone and
> > their brother is using XML for content management and
> > description these days. I love how people have been
> > doing this stuff for years, but when someone like Harris
> > does it, 'that's news'.
> 
> Well, the news is that XML will (might? should?) be used
> for IPTV, and evidently the news is also that something
> like XML needed to be specified for IPTV at all, as far
> as many at the NAB were concerned anyway.

But it is already being used for IPTV. Once again, point me to what they
did that is suddenly so revolutionary that it warrants news attention. 

They used the 'webservices' buzzword and use a SOAP connector - thats
about it. This 'article' is equivalent to me releasing a press release
saying that I am using MPEG4 for video encoding. So what?

I wonder how long it will be until they realize the one small problem
that other people have stumbled upon years ago -- that XML and SOAP are
very bandwidth intensive and don't work well on a broadcast delivery
network. If you have thousands of hosts on a IPTV network polling
servers over SOAP (or even basic XML over HTTP) for programming and VOD
information (even just EPG data), things slow down very quickly.
Nevermind that all the STBs need a SOAP layer to parse this data, which
can be overly complex and degrade the user interface speed when using a
slow processor.

I've run network analyzers on SOAP-based STBs that poll the server for
each EPG page view. The traffic flow from one STB was enough to make me
concerned. For these situations its easier to use the 'old' distribution
model of multicasting EPG and guide information to receivers. 

And what about the small companies out there with serialized binary XML
streaming stacks, with small-footprint STB clients that run in a hundred
Kb. *Those* are the people that should get press if one wants to talk
about next generation XML use in the IPTV world.

Last but not least XML is just ordered text, and anyone can slap a SOAP
and webservice connector on a content management system with an
interface to a back-end database, with *no* development effort. The
complexity is in the fine details.

Cheers
Kon


 
 
----------------------------------------------------------------------
You can UNSUBSCRIBE from the OpenDTV list in two ways:

- Using the UNSUBSCRIBE command in your user configuration settings at 
FreeLists.org 

- By sending a message to: opendtv-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the word 
unsubscribe in the subject line.

Other related posts: