If you like this web site, then you’ll enjoy our companion book. The title is ‘Interactive TV Standards‘, and it is written by myself (Steven Morris) and Anthony Smith-Chaigneau, VP of business development at Osmosys. Between us, we have many years of experience on both the technical and commercial sides of MHP and OCAP, so this book should give you some valuable insights in to why MHP and OCAP are the way they are, how to get the most out of them, and how to make money with interactive TV standards.
This is not ‘Learn MHP in 21 days’. This is an in-depth, real-world guide for students, techies, and managers that will help you build and use these standards effectively. We cover the whole process, from writing your first MHP or OCAP application to deploying an application and how you can make money from it. We look at most of the major MHP APIs, covering not only how you use them, but also taking a look at why they are designed like they are, how they work with the other APIs and how they may evolve in the future.
Features:
- Expanded coverage of MHP, GEM and JavaTV
- A detailed look at OCAP
- Discussion of the commercial issues involved in MHP from an ex-DVB Project Office staff member who was heavily involved in the commercial discussions
- A technical discussion of the standards from someone who helped design several of the MHP APIs
- A real-world look at this issues of building an MHP, OCAP or JavaTV middleware stack, based on our experiences with the standards
- An unbiased view of the strengths, weaknesses and politics of the current interactive TV standards
- Get tips on building reliable, high-quality MHP, OCAP and JavaTV applications and middleware
- Extended information based on questions and feedback that I’ve received for this site: get answers to questions that you the readers have been asking.
- Suitable for students, application developers, middleware developers, and managers who are working with MHP, OCAP, or JavaTV; or who want to start working with those standards.
- Written by two people who have been closely involved in the MHP standardization process
For more details of what is included, take a look at the table of contents.
"It is an excellent book! A must have! I strongly recommend it to anyone willing to have a broad and at the same time in-depth view into the numerous concepts and APIs necessary for designing IDTV applications. Several code snippets are provided to illustrate how each API can be used (this can help save a lot of time as the DVB MHP and OCAP specs are a little bit large)."
— Bernard Van Haecke, IDTV & VOD Application Specialist at Sun Microsystems.
Availability
Interactive TV Standards is now available from any good book store, or you can buy it online at the sites below:
- See the entry in our publisher’s catalogue (US customers)
- See the entry in our publisher’s catalogue (non-US customers)
- See the entry on Amazon.com
The table of contents listed in the Focal Press catalogue is a little out of date at the time I’m writing this, but you can see an accurate table of contents elsewhere on this site.
You may need the following details to order the book:
- ISBN: 0-240-80666-2
- Publisher: Focal Press
If you have any questions about the book, please contact me and I’ll do my best to answer them.
The back cover blurb
"For any digital TV developer or manager, the maze of standards and specifications related to MHP and OCAP is daunting?Xyou have to patch together pieces from several standards to gather all the necessary knowledge you need to compete worldwide. The standards themselves can be confusing, and contain many inconsistencies and missing pieces. Interactive TV Standards provides a guide for actually deploying these technologies for a broadcaster or product and application developer.
Understanding what the APIs do is essential for your job, but understanding how the APIs work and how they relate to each other at a deeper level helps you do it better, faster and easier. Learn how to spot when something that looks like a good solution to a problem really isn’t. Understand how the many standards that make up MHP fit together, and implement them effectively and quickly. Two DVB insiders teach you which elements of the standards that are needed for digital TV, highlight those elements that are not needed, and explain the special requirements that MHP places on implementations of these standards.
Once you’ve mastered the basics, you will learn how to develop products for US, European, and Asian markets – saving time and money. By detailing how a team can develop products for both the OCAP and MHP markets, Interactive TV Standards teaches you how to leverage your experience with one of these standards into the skills and knowledge needed to work with the critical, related standards.
Does the team developing a receiver have all the knowledge they need to succeed, or have they missed important information in an apparently unrelated standard? Does an application developer really know how to write a reliable piece of software that runs on any MHP or OCAP receiver? Does the broadcaster understand the business and technical issues well enough to deploy MHP successfully, or will their project fail? Increase your chances of success the first time with Interactive TV Standards."
About the authors
Steven Morris is an experienced developer in the area of interactive digital television. Formerly of Philips Electronics, one of the major players in the development of MHP, he was heavily involved in the development of the standard, its predecessors, and related standards such as JavaTV and OpenCable. In addition to work on the standard itself, Steven has experience developing MHP middleware and applications and is the Webmaster and content author for the ‘Interactive TV Web’ web site (www.interactivetvweb.org and www.mhp-interactive.org), a key resource for MHP, JavaTV and OCAP developers.
Anthony Smith-Chaigneau, is the former Head of Marketing & Communications for the DVB Consortium. In that role, he created the first MHP web sitewww.mhp.org and was responsible for driving the market implementation for this special DVB specification. Anthony left the DVB to join Advanced Digital Broadcast, where he brought the first MHP Set Top Boxes to market, helping ADB to win Cable & Satellite International’s prestigious Product of the Year Award 2003.
Related Titles by Focal Press
The MPEG Handbook by John Watkinson, ISBN: 0-240-51657-6
Digital Television by Herve Benoit, ISBN: 0-240-51695-8