scope:

The present document is one in a series of Technical Specification documents produced by the TV-Anytime Forum. These documents establish the fundamental specifications for the services, systems and devices that will conform to the TV-Anytime standard, to a level of detail that is implementable for compliant products and services.

TS 102 822-1 [1] and TS 102 822-2 [2] set the context and system architecture in which the standards for Metadata, Content referencing, Bi-directional metadata and metadata protection are to be implemented in the TV-Anytime environment. TS 102 822-1 [1] provides benchmark business models against which the TV-Anytime system architecture is evaluated to ensure that the specification enable key business applications. TS 102 822-2 [2] presents the TV-Anytime System Architecture and the relationship between Phase 1 and Phase 2 technologies. These first two documents are largely informative, while the remainder of the series is normative.

The present document has been developed during the second phase of TV-Anytime and covers the definition of the interchange data format for the delivery of TV-Anytime metadata and content referencing information from different data sources.

The interchange data format described in the present document was selected in order to satisfy the usage scenarios listed in TS 102 822-1 [1].

The TV-Anytime Forum has defined a number of data types that can be exchanged between TV-Anytime devices. These include program metadata, content referencing information, and user-centric metadata. The present document addresses data delivery from non TV-Anytime sources to TV-Anytime clients. A TV-Anytime client is typically a PDR, although in the present document the client can be any Internet connected device. These devices do not necessarily need to have the ability to display or store content, since many types of devices can exploit TV-Anytime metadata services (e.g. a mobile phone displaying an EPG).

Programme metadata and content referencing information can be delivered unidirectionally (e.g. via traditional broadcast or IP multicast) or via a bi-directional network. A TV-Anytime data provider might choose to deliver data using the interchange data format described because it allows:

• a simple adaptation of existing non-TV Anytime content selection and location services to provide data for TV-Anytime clients;

• the delivery of the TV-Anytime data to clients by TV-Anytime data providers without access to a broadcast system;

• TV-Anytime data providers to personalize the metadata they offer according to the source of the request;

• a range of client devices, which are not necessarily able to receive broadcast data, to access and exploit TV-Anytime data. For example, a mobile phone or personal organizer could use the metadata service to show the user an EPG.

Figure 1 shows the relation between non-TV-Anytime content selection and location services and TV-Anytime clients.