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General

DAVIC is a world-wide standardisation organisation, which specifies an open end-to-end system for digital audio-visual services. DAVIC addresses all layers of the entire service chain, from physical modulation schemes to programming interfaces for applications. Today, DAVIC focuses on specifications for TV Anywhere/TV Anytime systems, based on both IP (The DAVIC Intranet) and on traditional broadcasting tools.

DAVIC is the only body to unify content providers, service providers, broadcasters, telcos, consumer electronic manufacturers, computer manufacturers and IP-companies, thus ensuring a broad basis for agreed specifications. These last years, DAVIC's specifications proved to have gained increasingly firm ground. Especially the Broadcasting industry has implemented the specifications enthusiastically. As a result a lot of set-top boxes based on DAVIC technology are currently available on the market.

DAVIC's 22nd meeting kept the wind behind

DAVIC's 22nd meeting was held in Clearwater (Florida) from 24 to 28 September 1998, at the time when hurricane George visited the area. As a result this meeting will probably go down in history as 'George's meeting' rather than DAVIC's meeting. From time to time George and its threat of an evacuation seemed partners in the discussions. And halfway the week all 100 participants actually had to pack their bags and move to a more sheltered place some 50 miles away from George: the 'resort' Innesbrook. Here they continued their technical work, which proved to be as wind and weatherproof as always. Below you will find the main results.

DAVIC 1.5

The next DAVIC meeting will be held from 18 to 22 January in North America. At this meeting the Baseline documents for the DAVIC 1.5 specifications will be frozen as much as possible.

One of the key issues for DAVIC 1.5 is the specification of TV Anywhere/TV Anytime systems and scenarios. The TV Anytime scenario is the most promising one. It includes the possibility to save a television programme on disk in order to view it at a later time or date. This can even be a programme, which will be broadcast two days later.

The TV Anywhere scenario means e.g. watching a national television programme from the other side of the world.

DAVIC specifies two delivery systems that support TV Anywhere and TV Anytime. One is based on IP: the DAVIC Intranet; the other one is based on traditional broadcasting tools such as MPEG-2. For both scenarios DAVIC specifies Java programming interfaces (APIs). Moreover, DAVIC specifies a complete Intranet that supports real-time television and protocols for the use of local storage. Also security issues such as copy protection mechanisms, and a metadata specification which simplifies the searching process will be included in the standard.

In order to define this TV Anywhere/TV Anytime specification, DAVIC tackles a broad range of subjects for 1.5. Below you will find a list, which is not meant to be exhaustive.

Content formats: audio, speech and video

DAVIC considers adopting the 'scalable audio/speech profile' of MPEG-4 for broadcast over IP applications;
DAVIC 1.5 specs will allow future versions of DAVIC specs to support object oriented, arbitrarily shaped and VRML related functionality.

Content identification

How to fulfil the users' requests regarding content: single & multiple and easy to use?
How to map the users' request to the content available?
How and when to obtain the content?

Service information distribution over the Internet

Access to future/past programme schedules is needed for TV Anytime. The objective is to enable distribution of service information for these schedules via the Internet.

Application Program Interfaces (API's)

In principle DAVIC has decided to adopt the Open Card Framework for its 1.5 specs;
Development of a specification for Java APIs for TV Anytime;
Progress work on 'DAVIC Service in a PC WWW Browser'.

Basic security tools

Prevention of casual abuse (not professional piracy);
Content rights and security mechanisms. Key principles: external digital interfaces protected by security mechanisms; internal interfaces protected by the application.

Intranet Design

DAVIC agreed to use the protocols SDP, SLP, RTP and RTSP (for real-time control). The 1.5 specs will also include SIP and IPv6;
DAVIC agreed to a new reference model incorporating local storage.

Jitter

Mechanisms and schemes to address jitter in the transport of MPEG over IP;
RSVP is necessary, but not sufficient to ensure adequate jitter performance, which is dependent on e.g. network dimensioning and other traffic;
The DAVIC jitter specs will describe the capabilities required, in addition to RSVP to ensure adequate performance.

Metadata

Definition of the content structure and associated metadata vocabulary and schema.

 

DAVIC 1.4

During the meeting the DAVIC 1.4 specifications were released on CD-ROM and distributed to all member companies present. The 1.4 CD-ROM contains in full each of the DAVIC specifications 1.0, 1.1, 1.2, 1.3.1 and 1.4, which are backward compatible. Moreover, the CD-ROM contains the DAVIC Website (www.davic.org).

A copy of the CD-ROM can be obtained from Teresa Marsico of the DAVIC secretariat (email: secretariat@davic.org).

Strategic planning

A Strategic Planning Advisory Committee (SPAC) was established during the meeting. Its mandate is to produce proposals for DAVIC workplans and to monitor the procedure of specification creation. A workplan indicates which new systems and tools should be added to the DAVIC specifications and when they need to be added.

A new SPAC will be established at the start of each major new DAVIC work cycle, i.e. DAVIC 1.6 and 1.7.The SPAC members, about 15, represent a broad range of industries and regions. Chairman of the present SPAC is Arian Koster of KPN (Netherlands).

For more information, please contact Mike Carr, President of DAVIC.

If you would like to receive these communications in future by email please contact Teresa Marsico of the DAVIC secretariat (email: secretariat@davic.org)

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