Freeview Plus Announced

[tezza007]

I've just seen that they've announced Freeview Plus is being launched tonight and you just have to "press the Green button". So I pressed the blue button which brought up 3 options, ABC, Freeviewplus and Iview. I selected Freeview, it warned me downloads would count towards my data [god bless unlimited] then asked for my postcode and Ok and that was the end of it. I was downloading at 1,200kB/s and FTPíng from my laptop to the T3 though

2-9.jpg (73.84 KiB) Viewed 2603 times

[prl]

That bit of Freeview Plus is HbbTV, Hybrid Broadcast Broadband TV.

It basically provides a link between digital TV broadcasts and broadcaster online services. Hence the downloading.

Surely BLUE and then select HbbTV services, though, not just the blue button?

You can also go to HbbTV with long-RED from live TV.

Enhancement request #304 - Coloured buttons for HbbTV is about getting the coloured buttons to conform to their HbbTV uses. That will probably mean that (short) RED for Instant Recording will also go, leaving REC as the only button for that function.

The Free TV Operational Practice OP–61: Implementation of Hybrid Broadcast Broadband TV by Australian Free-to-air Television Broadcasters Section 5 has this information about button use for HbbTV:

• GREEN button functionality on a DTV receiver remote control
• RED button functionality for specific Australian television broadcaster’s applications

I can't really work out just what those two functions are supposed to be.

[tezza007]

Surely BLUE and then select HbbTV services, though, not just the blue button?

Correct, I missed that step

[NedIS]

When l do the long press on the red button I get hbbtv plugin on the T3 but nothing on my TV?

[dumbthumbs]

Well I went through all channels tonight.
ABC works. Slow, but works.
SBS. Plays pre-programme, then nothing.
7 Does nothing
9 Does nothing
10Play auto nothing
10Play. Shows come up, but when playing.......yep nothing!
Freeview Plus starts putting up a menu at a painstaking rate, then freezes. over time various broken artifacts pop on the screen.

And it has to go faster than it does. I am surprised that the T3 has less horsepower than a smartphone, but it shouldn't need any more to give snappy response putting up some menus and playing online services.

[MrQuade]

What I would like to see is any device OTHER than the t3 do hbbtv so that we can determine if it is the service that is slowing things down or if it is the t3.

Until then, I will reserve judgement.

I place zero trust in the freeview consortium.

[prl]

... Freeview Plus starts putting up a menu at a painstaking rate, then freezes. over time various broken artifacts pop on the screen. ...

I get this too. This looks like part of the "old" Freeview Plus, with the MHEG-5 EPG and series recording. That was originally supposed to be only available on Freeview Plus badged (and limited) devices. Perhaps that still applies. If it does, there are probably better ways of handling it.

And it has to go faster than it does. I am surprised that the T3 has less horsepower than a smartphone, but it shouldn't need any more to give snappy response putting up some menus and playing online services.

TheT3's web browser is also very slow. I don't know whether the rendering of the HbbTV screens also uses components from the Web browser.

[peteru]

I don't know whether the rendering of the HbbTV screens also uses components from the Web browser.

Yes it does.

HbbTV is effectively web based apps that can be launched using some data embedded in the AIT stream that is sent by the networks. Most of the time this data just directs the user to a web server that holds the actual HbbTV (JavaScript) app. The entire HbbTV user experience is only as good as the browser that runs the apps and of course the app code that the broadcasters provide.

[prl]

I don't know whether the rendering of the HbbTV screens also uses components from the Web browser.

Yes it does.
...

That's what I suspected, and it seems to explain the slowness of rendering the HbbTV screens. Perhaps the browser code is also the cause of the hang when you try to enter the Freeview Plus screen.

[dumbthumbs]

It seems that the web browser is the root of all evil. As a plain web browser, I found it unusable. Any Linux hack knows that you don't need a high level of resources to run a web browser, so it seems that this is where the developers need to concentrate some effort.

Perhaps a new html rendering engine to replace the Opera rubbish there now will make an enormous difference throughout the appliance.

Is the web browser written in native code, or is it running in some inefficient scripting language?

[prl]

... Is the web browser written in native code, or is it running in some inefficient scripting language?

The browser executable code on the T3 is in /usr/local/hbb-browser/lib. It looks like normal executable code to me.

In particular:

Code: Select all

cambyses:python prl$ file hbbtv.app
hbbtv.app: ELF 32-bit LSB executable, MIPS, MIPS32 version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked (uses shared libs), for GNU/Linux 2.4.0, with unknown capability 0xf41 = 0x756e6700, with unknown capability 0x70100 = 0x1040000, stripped
cambyses:python prl$
cambyses:python prl$ file libopera.so.3.3
libopera.so.3.3: ELF 32-bit LSB shared object, MIPS, MIPS32 version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked, with unknown capability 0xf41 = 0x756e6700, with unknown capability 0x70100 = 0x1040000, not stripped
cambyses:python prl$

Which looks like compiled code to me.

I'd expect that most of the heavy lifting in the browser would be done in the libopera.so.3.3 shared library.

Opera is not open source.

[Obiwan]

I get the same result. The render is slow and incomplete.

[peteru]

So, I've done some digging into these HbbTV compatibility issues and the news is not good. The problem is that this is Freeview all over again!

The services that work have no DRM.

The ones that fail to work:

Code: Select all

         <ContentProtection schemeIdUri="urn:mpeg:dash:mp4protection:2011" value="cenc"/>
         <ContentProtection schemeIdUri="urn:uuid:5E629AF5-38DA-4063-8977-97FFBD9902D4">
            <mas:MarlinContentIds>
...

Following the bread crumb trail...

Marlin was founded by Intertrust, Panasonic, Philips, Samsung and Sony. They get to decide who's allowed in and on what terms.