HbbTV-Compliant Platform for Hybrid Media Delivery and Synchronization on Single- and Multi-Device Scenarios

Abstract

The combination of broadcast and broadband (hybrid) technologies for delivering TV related media contents can bring fascinating opportunities. It is motivated by the large amount and diversity of media contents, together with the ubiquity and multiple connectivity capabilities of modern consumption devices. This paper presents an end-to-end platform for the preparation, delivery and synchronized consumption of related hybrid (broadcast/broadband) media contents on a single device and/or on multiple close-by devices (i.e., a multi-device scenario). It is compatible with the latest version of the Hybrid Broadcast Broadband TV (HbbTV) standard (version 2.0.1). Additionally, it provides adaptive and efficient solutions for key issues not specified in that standard, but that are necessary to successfully deploy hybrid and multi-device media services. Moreover, apart from MPEG-DASH and HTML5, which are the broadband technologies adopted by HbbTV, the platform also provides support for using HLS and RTP/RTCP broadband technologies. The presented platform can provide support for many hybrid media services. In this paper, in order to evaluate it, the use case of multi-device and multi-view TV service has been selected. The results of both objective and subjective assessments have been very satisfactory, in terms of performance (stability, smooth playout, delays and sync accuracy), usability of the platform, usefulness of its functionalities, and the awaken interest in these kinds of platforms.

Augmenting TV Viewing using Acoustically Transparent Auditory Headsets

“…• The technical challenges of enacting cross-device synchronization during TV viewing [66] (e.g. for the HbbTV platform [10,62]) and the perception of synchronization [64,73] pioneered by Vinayagamoorthy et al;…”

Synchronization Mechanisms for Multi-User and Multi-Device Hybrid Broadcast and Broadband Distributed Scenarios

“…It is currently being deployed and provides functionalities and mechanisms to synchronously consume hybrid content in the MS and, optionally, in one (or more) CSs. Evidence of the importance of this standard and of the new hybrid TV consumption scenario is the existence of the many European research projects which have been focused on the use of hybrid technologies to enrich TV services, such as HBB-NEXT, 1 HBB4ALL, 2 TV-RING, 3 MEDIASCAPE, 4 MPAT, 5 ImAc 6 or ImmersiaTV. 7 On the other hand, the social consumption of media content around a single device (e.g., a group of friends watching a football match together at home) has been a traditional habit.…”

“…Nevertheless, there are still many challenges to be tackled in order to provide those shared experiences, such as dynamic community building, media synchronization (sync hereafter), Quality of Service/Experience (QoS/E), scalability, presence awareness, privacy concerns, and social networking integration [2]. In particular, this paper focuses on one of these challenges, media sync, which should be guaranteed between 1 https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100252_es.html (last access, October 2018) 2 http://www.hbb4all.eu/ (last access, October 2018) 3 http://www.tvring.eu/ (last access, October 2018) 4 http://www.mediascapeproject.eu/ (last access, October 2018) 5 http://mpat.eu/ (last access, October 2018) 6 http://www.imac-project.eu/ (last access, October 2018) 7 http://www.immersiatv.eu/ (last access, October 2018) the playout processes of multiple remote devices (a.k.a. Inter Destination Media Sync or IDMS) and/or close-by devices (a.k.a.…”

“…In this paper, on the one hand, the IDMS part of the proposed sync mechanism can follow both centralized and distributed control schemes. On the other hand, it is combined with an IDES mechanism, previously proposed by Boronat et al [5]. Moreover, as another novelty, a set of messages are also proposed in this paper to provide session management capabilities and allow the sync of the involved users in a shared session.…”

“…Moreover, as another novelty, a set of messages are also proposed in this paper to provide session management capabilities and allow the sync of the involved users in a shared session. In order to assess the accuracy obtained by the proposed mechanism, it has been integrated into an end-to-end hybrid delivery platform, described in [4] and [5]. It has been implemented and evaluated for the hybrid Social TV use case with multi-screen and multi-view functionalities, with distributed users and involving several consumption devices in each destination.…”