SOME MEWBIE QUESTIONS (please answer me...)
Im pretty new in developing java TV applications,
I've read a lot of tutorials and articles but I still miss something:
- is it possibile to connect the STB to my PC in order to download from my pc a transport stream (with video, audio and applications) so
to really test my applications?
- if yes, how? Do i need some development software or can i just do it by myself?
- is it true that for the moment i can just develop using MHP 1.0 since MHP 1.1 is not yet supported by commercial STB?
- Let me know if the following is correct:
The STB receives a transport stream with audio-video and application (packaged in the carousel), I cannot send video inside the carousel, so being ingteractive means that I can "play" with images, graphics, sounds but i cannot push a button and see another video, correct?
In this case is it possible that the transport stream is tranporting let'say 4 video-audio and via Xlet I decide which of them I want to see?
Thanks for all.
[1028 byte] By [
alarik69a] at [2007-10-3 10:14:55]
You can do this, but it's usually not easy. Different STBs let you do this in different ways, but they basically fall into two categories:
1) developer STBs that let you stream content to the box over IP and which can read apps form either a local HD or one that's mounted over the network. These are usually pretty expensive to buy and not easy to get because of demand, but are ueful for developing apps and testing them on real hardware.
2) A normal STB that you stream a transport stream to over the cable/satellite/terrestrial input. This type of STB is cheaper, but you often don't get any kind of debugging capability and you need the hardware to generate a transport stream that the STB can actually receive. This extra hardware more than makes up the cost of a developer STB.
I've used both options, and for developing apps it's far easier to use option 1.Option 2 has no real practical benefits, and the test/debug cycle becomes a lot slower. In the first case, you may not need much additional software, but in the second case you will need software for generating an object carousel and a transport stream that the STB can read, as well as the hardware needed to get the transport stream to the STB.
To answer your second question, most if not all deployments of MHP right now are MHP 1.0.
On your third question, you can have more than one video stream in a service, so an Xlet can switch between these. With a little more work in your app, you can even switch to a video stream in a different transport stream. The restriction on downloadable video in MHP is to do with file sizes and caching rather than anything else - video files are big, and the average bit-rate in a carousel is pretty small. This means that a video file would take a very long time to download, and the nature of a carousel means that you couldn't start playing it before you received it all. Since an STB has very little spare memory, it's also very unlikely that most STBs could actually load all of a video clip to play it.
Steve.
