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1.1.3 The PDR and non-l ineal consumption o f TV

Another one of the technological changes of the last decade that are having a significant

impact in our television habits is the growing popularity of the DVR (Digital Video

Recorder)or, using a more general term, the PDR (Personal Digital Recorder). After all, it

is a modern version of the traditional video recorder, now equipped with a hard disc, in

which the contents are stored after extracting the transport stream (or after their

digitalization in case of receiving an analog signal).

At first, this can seem as a simple technological evolution, resulting in quantitative

improvements (more storage space, better quality and reliability on the recordings or

easier access to contents). However, it implies a great qualitative improvement, more

important than it may seem, mainly due to the great flexibility that digital technologies have

to add descriptive data to audiovisual information, and for the further processing inside or

outside the receptor, before, during or after the reproduction of the content itself.

This flexibility results in important advantages on the field related to recording and

enjoyment of audiovisual contents:

More ease to plan recordings, based on EPGs that only require the pressing of a

button and avoid us to indicate the complete period we want to record.

Direct access to stored contents, indentified by a significant name, without

searching and waiting times that discourage the punctual and spontaneous

consumption.

Ability to stop naturally live content and resume it afterwards (time-shifting).

Ability to edit the recordings, and extract them from the PDR in several formats and

mediums.

It also opens a world of new possibilities directly derived from the abilities of interaction

with the environment, characteristic of digital devices, for example:

The ability to exchange information with computers, not only to transfer to them our

recordings, but also to import contents or to reproduce them remotely.

The ability to reproduce all kinds of content of multimedia character, such as

photos, music, radio

The ability to access directly to contents given through internet services, some as

known as Youtube or Picassa.

The ability to take the iniciative in the name of the user in processes of selection or

acquisition of contents.

It is, in essence, a whole set of new or improved abilities in comparison to the previous

scene, result of the process of convergence between smart devices that favor digital

technologies. If we concentrate on the different aspects related to out leisure habits,

this convergence opens the door (although not necessarily directly) to an extension of

the traditional way of consuming television, which is based on a lineal distribution and

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1.5 Content of the book

Just as it has been mentioned throughout the previous Chapter, the rest of the

Chapters of this book analyze in detail the various parts of the TV-Anytime standard.

Summarizing:

Chapter 2 presents a general outline of the standard, showing the logic architecture

of a possible platform that realizes the TV-Anytime services, and describes the

main elements involved, together with the information they handle. It can be

considered, partly, the summary of the book, in which the content of the following

chapters is presented.

Chapter 3 is dedicated to the mechanism defines in TV-Anytime for the univocal

reference to the contents, and the resolution of the mentioned references to get

localizators that make it possible to get the contents.

Chapter 4 is entirely centered on the description of the metainformation,

standardized for the description of the audiovisual contents.

Chapter 5 deals with different elements and procedures to implement the smartpersonalized services related to the audiovisual contents: facilities to manage the

personalization processes, mechanisms for the dynamic substitution of commercial

ads, and a coupon system to promote sales related to the previously announced

contents or the products.

Chapter 6 deals with the packaging of the contents, a procedure to group and

coordinate many thought contents to be consumed together in a synchronized way.

Chapter 7 handles different aspects of the transport of the TV-Anytime

metainformation in unidirectional contexts, including facilities for its management at

the destination.

Chapter 8 deals with the characteristics of the communication with external

services of provision of metainformation, accessible through bidirectional networks,

and the procedures for the sharing of user profiles.

Chapter 9 covers the remote programmation of a receptor (of a user or a service

given by third parts) and the formats of exchange of information with cases in

which the regulations of TV-Anytime are not applied.

Finally, Chapter 10 closes the book with brief conclusions.

It is clear, after this summary and what was described on the previous section, that this

book gives a complete treatment of all the aspects that are dealt with in the TV-Anytime

standard. Without doubt, this requires a more ambitious and extensive work.

On the contrary, the aim of this text is simply to awaken the curiosity about the standard,

the services and models of the business it is trying to impulse, and the aspects to which it

presents a standardized solution to facilitate the development of audiovisual smart

services.

Because of this, to achieve an simple and understandable text, in which technical details

do not bore the readers that hold certain curiosity, we have limited the description to those

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aspects that we find more interesting, because they have solutions more related to the

context we deal with, because new mechanisms to solve the problems throughout the

development are involved, and they are not only technological generic adaptations, as can

be the management of rights or encrypted and authentication of information.

Equally, in the parts dealt with, especially the description of the types of metainformation,

the examples given pretend to illustrate the descriptive possibilities of language, give an

image of the characteristics of the contents we can find in the documents, to be afterwards

be processed by software applications. They are not, in any case, complete specifications

of all the fields that can be used to describe the contents, something that would require

more space and would probably end up being a more tedious text. If the examples

exposed here awaken the curiosity of the reader to know details of the descriptive options

of a concrete structure, a simple reading to the documents of the standard will solve any

question quickly and precisely. The aim of this book is to encourage that, that simple

reading, offering a panoramic outline of the parts of the standard, with the aims and bases

of each of them, to help those who want to find more about any aspect of the standard.