W3C Web on TV Workshop — Summary

2-3 September 2010

Hosted by W3C/Keio, Tokyo, Japan

On September 2nd and 3rd, 2010, W3C (the World Wide Web Consortium) held a workshop on "Web on TV — Use cases and requirements for smarter integration of Web technologies, broadcasting and non-PC devices —".

The minutes of the workshop are available on the W3C Web server at:
 http://www.w3.org/2010/09/web-on-tv/minutes.html

The goal of the workshop was to identify key use cases and important requirements for smarter integration of (1) existing Web standards, (2) broadcasting and (3) non-PC devices like television. For that purpose, we discussed the following key questions:

• What are the key use cases; i.e. what types of new applications do we need to enable?
• What new standards or extensions of existing standards do we need to enable these types of applications?
• What impediments exist in the current standards that do not permit us to fully realize their power?

The workshop had 144 attendees from various industries including broadcasters, telecom companies, a content provider, device vendors, publishers, software vendors, standardization organizations, Web application providers researchers, and the Japanese Government. Please see the attendees list at the top of the minutes for the detail.

During the workshop, we had very interesting demonstrations of actual digital TV services by Japanese public and commercial broadcasters, and six panel sessions consisting of brief presentations of the attendees' position statements followed by dedicated discussions on use cases and requirements for smarter integration of Web and TV. The topics for the panel sessions were:

• Existing Digital TV approaches
• Proposals for smarter integration of Web and TV from vendors' viewpoints
• Proposals for smarter integration of Web and TV from research viewpoints
• The role of HTML5 in the Web on TV, esp. expectation for HTML5 as UI
• The role of HTML5 in the Web on TV, esp. TV as the hub within home network
• The role of HTML5 in the Web on TV, esp. Device APIs for TV

During the afternoon break on the second day, we held a vote on use cases and requirements proposed at the workshop so that we could prioritize them and identify potential new languages and language extensions. One representative from each participating organization was chosen and voted on their preferred use cases and requirements using five points. The top 9 categories of the use cases and requirements, roughly in order from most interest to least, were:

1. APIs for TV functions: 41 points
2. Richer user experience: 37 points
3. Smarter integration with CE (Consumer Electronics): 32 points
4. Content rights: 12 points
5. Personalization: 8 points
6. TV as broadcasting service (rather than a device): 8 points
7. Accessibility: 7 points
8. Relationship with existing approaches: 7 points
9. Security: 4 points

See the minutes for the detail of the vote results.

During the summarization session, we discussed the possible next steps about how to deal with the above use cases and requirements, and the conclusion from the session includes the following:

• There was a consensus to create an Interest Group to discuss the details of the use cases and requirements presented during the workshop. The time frame for the expected group is by the end of the year (=Christmas).
• Yosuke Funahashi from Tomo-Digi and Masahito Kawamori from NTT volunteered to be the co-Chairs for the Interest Group. HyeonJae Lee from LG also expressed his interest in being a co-Chair for the group. Charles McCathieNevile from Opera volunteered to help them generate a draft charter for the group.
• Kazuyuki Ashimura from W3C will help them as the W3C staff contact.
• We will soon create a mailinglist for detailed discussion on the details of the next steps, e.g., how to form the proposed Interest Group.
• All the workshop attendees are encouraged to join the W3C and participate in the proposed Interest Group.

The above mailing list for the discussion on the next steps has been created as a public list, <public-web-and-tv@w3.org>. To subscribe to the list, send an email to <public-web-and-tv-request@w3.org> with the word "subscribe" in the subject line. The archive for the list is accessible on-line. The subscribers of the list will review the use cases and requirements presented during the workshop and discuss how to form the proposed Interest Group. Note that the possibility of creating a Working Group rather than a Interest Group for the expected requirements is not excluded even though the consensus during the workshop was to initiate the efforts with an Interest Group.

The Call for Participation, the Logistics, the Presentation Guideline, the Agenda and the Minutes are also available on the W3C Web server.

Masao Isshiki, Michael Smith, Deborah Dahl and Kazuyuki Ashimura, Workshop Organizing Committee