DVB-SI is the television and radio metadata standard that made possible the first generation of interoperable electronic programme guides (EPGs) in Europe. TV-Anytime promises to be the key metadata standard for the next evolutionary step, personalised programme guides and content discovery serives.
Where digital broadcasting drove the first generation of metadata-based applications, the addition web-mediated digital content services and of high volume, low cost storage (in the home and on the network) will drive the next. Viewers will now be faced with even more choice. As well as the increasing number of channels and interactive services available in real-time, they'll have access to locally and/or remotely stored archives of programming.
There's no way that viewers will be able to plough through endless channel-by-channel listings plus catalogues of what's available from storage (such as video-on-demand services and downloads to the hard discs of personal digital recorders). Their viewing experience will be centred on navigational aids that track down programming and other digital content that corresponds to their viewing preferences.
The TV-Anytime Forum was established in September 1999 to develop open specifications designed to allow all interested parties to exploit the potential of high volume digital storage in digital television platforms. One of the the main tasks that it set itself was the development of a metadata standard that would not only enable viewers to navigate through the growing television offer, but also meet the needs of advertisers (wishing to target appropriate messages to viewers) and of all the other actors in the television value chain (including content originators, broadcasters, network operators and equipment-makers).
onTV Europe Ltd. was an active contributor to the development of the TV-A metadata specification right up until the completion of the specification in August 2005. Our contributions focused on enabling precise classification and on the specification's XML schema- both of which offer significantly improved functionality compared to DVB-SI. The TV-Anytime content classification ("genre") dictionary, which is based on an initiative of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), offers four levels of classification and far more classification terms than DVB-SI. The TVA Metadata XML Schema provides by far the richest currently available rule-bound vocabulary for describing television programmes and other forms of digital content and content services. Together the dictionary and the Schema add to up to a very powerful platform for personalisable programme guides.
In January 2006 the specifications of the TV-Anytime Forum, including the metadata specification, were adopted by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) as an ETSI Technical Specification. The new specification, ETSI TS 102 822, is entitled Broadcast and On-line Services: Search, select and rightful use of content on personal storage systems and will be available (real soon now...) from the publications download area at www.etsi.org.
onTV:meta - today's solution to tomorrow's problems
onTV:meta , our television metadata management system, is squarely based on the TVA metadata standard. It offers all the forward-looking functionality and interoperability of the standard, together with the flexibility and power to address immediate TV metadata publishing challenges in a cost effective way.