One of the most difficult things about developing applications for MHP and/or OCAP is getting a development environment that lets you build and run Xlets. There are two approaches to this:
- Buy a commercial development system. These are expensive (around 1000 euros), and if you have one of these then you’ve probably got all of the information you need to get started. If not, ask your supplier.
- Download an Xlet emulator and use that on your PC to emulate the environment you need.
Since the second option is a lot cheaper (i.e. free) then that’s the approach that most people will take when they are dabbling with MHP or OCAP. Setting up this kind of environment can be quite daunting for someone who is just getting started with digital TV, and so in this tutorial we will show you how to set up XleTView, one of the more popular Xlet emulators. XleTView is not the only free emulator that is available, of course, and so some of you may prefer to use the OpenMHP emulator instead.
The rest of this tutorial is based heavily on Martin Sveden’s documentation for XleTView, and we would like to take this opportunity to thank Martin for his work on XleTView and for his contribution to the MHP community. We hope that this documentation will help to answer some of your questions about setting up and running an Xlet emulator.
If anything in this tutorial isn’t clear to you, please let us know and we’ll do our best to clarify it. At the same time, this page is not a substitute for the XleTView documentation that we just mentioned, or the XleTView discussion forums.
When not to use XleTView
While XleTView (and OpenMHP, for those who prefer it) has a number of advantages if you’re just getting started, it is not a substitute for a real development platform if you are doing serious MHP or OCAP development work. Because it is only a partial implementation (and because it has not been through any kind of interoperability testing) you are better off using a commercial MHP or OCAP development system if you are developing applications that are to be deployed in the real world.
Suitable development systems are available from ADB, Alticast, IRT, Osmosys and many other companies. Please check the products page in this site for more information about MHP development systems.
Another time not to use XleTView is for compiling your applications. The tutorial on building MHP applications goes in to the reasons for this, and suggests alternative ways to build your application.