> -----Original Message-----
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of George Wright
> Sent: 12 January 2007 20:00
> To: [email protected]
> Subject: Re: [backstage] Five Live Partnership - get your
> idea commissioned.
>
> Brian Butterworth wrote:
> > Nice idea for a side-by-side information system for Five
> Live. I've
> > said before that it would be great for the BBC's live news services
> > (so, Radio 4, Five Live, News24 and BBC World) to
> constantly broadcast
> > a live news.bbc.co.uk unique identifier alongside each story.
> >
> .<snip>
> > On digital TV it would be very handy for the current story to made
> > available IN FULL as part of the OpenTV (satellite) or MHEG5
> > (Freeview) service. These "red button" services have very,
> very cut
> > down versions of the stories on their services (to save
> bandwidth and
> > increase response times), but it wouldn't break the
> bitstream bank for
> > the full text of one story to be accessible in full by pressing the
> > red button.
Here's what I thought...
All the stories that I am concerned with will have had to originate from the
BBC news web site.
You have almost got something that would work brilliantly.
I'm assuming that the Ceefax system, WAP system and XML feeds are driven
from content from the website.
Stories that are "TV only" and have not made it online where the news is
breaking on air first have no web content yet are not candidates for the
system as there isn't need to link to content that does not yet exist. The
same can also apply for a story that originates on radio, or from a regional
TV studio or local radio station.
Currently, as each webpage is published it will be considered for inclusion
on the feeds that provides Ceefax (and WAP and XML feeds). Each page will
be one of:
1) A web page that has more priority over one that exists in the page
numbering pool. The least important page is dropped from the numbering pool
and is allocated the ejected page's number.
2) Be an update for an existing story, where the existing story's page
number is reused.
3) Rejected because of relative unimportance.
There is, in effect, a database of Ceefax Page Numbers (CPN) which are
references to the web page they were created from.
Let's say we now link any audio or video content to the web story.
Somewhere in the tags describing the content for each piece of video that
can go out to air you put the web page's reference.
All you need now is to have a system that, when a report is played from the
hard drive to air a lookup is made to get the correct CPN for the story and
if there is one, on-screen you overlay a graphic of a red dot and the page
number.
This would mean "press the red button and type in the number" and it would
work by taking you to the bridge on pressing the red button and then
entering the number (and pressing SELECT).
When the channel is used on analogue (as it will be for another five years)
pressing TXT and the number will give you the page too.
If you tag the autocue scripts you could use the CPN lookup to have a
graphic that changes even with the headlines being read. If there is no
video and nothing being provided fallback defaults such as "200" during
business reports, "300" during sports reports or just "101" for news.
This could be used on News 24, World, and the One news, Four news, even on
Newsnight and on regional news programs because you would have a 1:1 link to
a web page and that would have a 1 on 1 link with a CPN.
As the MASSIVE TEXT that you have on News 24 and World is a headline, which
too can reference a CPN. Also breaking news can indicate that stories are
online before on air.
Also you could add the numbers to the scrolling headlines at the bottom of
the screen by tagging a small red dot and the number after each headline.
If you want to be really integrated with this, you could add it to the
dynamic headline at the top of News 24's hour.
This would be very helpful to people who have the news on where the sound is
muted or inaudible to access more information.
As for online, if you could simply type in for CPN 116 just
"news.bbc.co.uk/116" into an web browser you can then make it simple for
people to link to a news story which will bring up the correct page by using
the LCN table the other way.
I picture the on-screen graphic changing between a red dot at the CPN and
news.bbc.co.uk/CPN from time to time.
You could broadcast the "news.bbc.co.uk/116" in the current text for both
DAB and RDS radios. You could also make the current broadcast DAB WAP link
be "news.bbc.co.uk/116". As the page is a redirect there would be no
problem serving many different systems this way, so the correct form of
content could be provided, and would even work with the cable TV systems too
I would have thought. When the redirect is used a list of the most recent
several stories that have used the same CPN can be listed to the side of the
story, so even if an reasonably old story is viewed on a PVR there is a
one-click link to get to the right one: the on-screen description will match
the online description exactly.
If you record news programs and play them back and the short-code number was
in-vision then the link will still be visible and for a time usable. Also,
if they contained important information such as public safety information
they could be used by the presenters.
The only real issue is that if they are in vision and they are recorded they
will eventually become out-of-date. If the pool of numbers could be
automatically expanded from the current range to include most of the
possible page numbers between 100-399 for news, business and sport by using
the web-page hit statistics already in use on the BBC news web site will
provide a statistical basis for deciding which numbers are dropped.
If the pool CPN numbers in used is larger than the capacity you just
broadcast the URL in it's place, which can just be an "empty file" marker
for the MHEG-5 and OpenTV system which displays the "news.bbc.co.uk/116"
line or display the URL as a single line of Ceefax text.
By having the feed of the numbers being generated by the channel fed to the
digital television data carousel you could simply implement a few page
numbers to be 'short codes' so 102 (for example) could redirect to the
"current" news story. This wouldn't be a problem because you would have
had to wait for the 'bridge' to load anyway after pressing 'RED' and you
need 102 to get the most recent 'current' item so you can type in 102 (and
get say 145) and moments later type in 102 and get a different 'current'
item.
If you maintain a list of the last five current items you could perhaps list
these dynamically on 'the bridge' on News 24? I suggest that for these five
pages the full text is added to the carousel and be available dynamically by
a 'full text' button press when the relevant CPN page is displayed. The
idea is that you can press RED 102 and then 'Full text' for the next five
stories, or access them directly from the 'last five stories' bridge
facility. I'm picturing five menu options where the top one is the most
recent story, dynamically updated.
This means the relevant "full content" web content made available to digital
TV would follow the stories being broadcast live.
When web streamed video gets slightly better you could put the
"news.bbc.co.uk/CPN" on screen, as this too will provide a manual link even
if the content is replayed some time later.
>
> Hi there. I work in Interactive TV development at the BBC.
> This is an interesting idea. A few things about it
> immediately spring to mind:
>
> * We don't always have associated (on iTV) stories for each
> bulletin that News produces (there are a lot of bulletins,
> and a lot of channels, and limited space for text content, as
> you've noticed) - so what do we do when there's no iTV
> content around a specific story within a bulletin?
Using three digital CPNs with a red dot before them would be as discrete as
you can be. If there's no content to link to, no problem because there is
no content to link to. You can always have "default" values that link to
index pages.
If the viewed content is old and the number has been reused, by using the
redirect you know to list the last couple of weeks 'alternatives' for this
number. If there's no TV story, there is no problem because there is
nothing to link from.
> * We're seeing increasing use of time shifted viewing -
> (Vod, PVRs, the catchup TV stuff we're doing, home brew Myth/
> whatever boxes) - and unless these save the MHEG/ data stream
> (unlikely for most of them) anyone viewing after the event
> will, at best, be taken to a completely unrelated story. Not
> a deal-breaker, but still a bit annoying
By using a pool large enough and by using web-hit statistics to work out
which stories are not popular the number reuse scheme can persist page
numbers for stories that are popular.
> * If the story *does* exist, how do we identify it? Some stuff's
> easy(ish) - ('new Bush announcement', 'UK Minister resigns',
> etc) - but a lot of more complex stories might have a number
> of different options. This will involve human intervention or
> some clever munging to match up - which could go wrong.
Follow the Ceefax plan. 30 years of experience doing the scheme means that
even if it's the best way at least 80% of the population already understands
it.
> * If we have identified the story correctly, mapping it
> precisely to the time of the slot within the bulletin will be
> hard (bulletins go out live and don't always stick to the
> running order). It'd probably involve some one pushing
> buttons in the playout area iun real time to sync it to the
> broadcast- and to do that for all our bulletins is a lot of
> people doing a lot of button pushing :(
By using the changing CPNs the timing to get into the bridge and type the
number doesn't matter as long as you can remember three digits.
> * There's an unpredictable latency between stuff being TXed
> and being displayed by the receiver/ STB (depending on
> platform, satellite, etc
> etc) . This could mean we have 'stale', 'unrelated' content
> around the story.
By linking to a web story, you can use the relevant web hits (UK for News
24, World for World etc) to automatically trash the CPNs that are 'stale'.
I would say that the 'Ceefax' defection of 'a story' is the right one and
once you're online where the bulk of the data is you will be able to easily
navigate to the relevant place.
> * Ugh, regional variation (of linear news bulletins compared
> to our relatively un-regionalised iTV content)
Again, if everyone's news play out system uses the same system it can work
on any system. If a regional news item is played on News 24 or regional
news programs share stories it will still work.
I would suggest creating at least a sub-page for each region so that
regional stories can be included in the scheme.
> * Assuming all the above are solved (gets out magic wand), we
> still have to get the viewer to the content. The 'bridge'
> (right hand side bar you get when you press red) has space
> for specific content slots, and main headlines, etc - but tbh
> whatever's on BBC News at 1822 on a slow news day might not
> make the cut - and if we can't get the viewer to the content,
> all the above is lost. It wouldn't be an option to take
> people straight to the news story in question simply by them
> pressing the red button - not everyone's pressing red to find
> out more information on said news story
You can't do it direct from the red button, I understand that. Just make as
I say five items on the bridge dynamic on News 24 so the top of the five is
the current story and the next for are the next four eldest.
As I said you can have "short codes" that redirect to the current story too
(say 102).
>
> All that said, it is something to think about. Interested in
> people's thoughts.
I think I covered it all. I'd love this to happen, it would be so much more
dynamic. I think it would be great for people moving - perhaps reluctantly
- from Ceefax to Freeview (or Freesat) a better feeling for what interactive
means without overloading them with new concepts.
Using the in-vision CPN short-codes would even work with streamed content,
on-demand content (as it can be added to the video as it is encoded), live
TV, DAB, RDS, online, TV+internet, DAB+PDA (like my lobster), RDS radio and
WAP phone.
You could even have 'Have your say' content in the system too. The only
change you would need to make this work with Ceefax is to have the regional
index pages on different numbers (as Ceefax is regionalised and digital text
isn't).
Finally, the Freeview BBC multiplex 1 contains the regional versions of BBC
ONE, and a nationwide version of BBC News 24. If the 'news scroller' on
News 24 could be inserted into the multiplex 1 network at the same point as
BBC One, you could produce a 'regional news and sport' scroller for each BBC
News region, with CPNs that would regionlise the channel, so that Scottish
news is seen on the scroller in Scotland, Welsh in Wales and so on. You
could distribute the same versions to the cable head ends, but keep a single
nationwide-scroller version on digital satellite.
>
> > Also, for PC reception of Freeview or DSat, a
> current-story-identifier
> > would - software permitting -allow XP Media Center, Vista
> Ultimate etc
> > to link to a relevant web page.
>
> Where would we put this data track? And how would the
> software at the other end decode it? There's limited support
> for MHEG decoding/ browsing on consumer DVB-T PC cards, and I
> don't know that we'd be embedding urls in TV based content.
> I'm also unsure of any consumer Open TV based decoder for
> PCs, which would rule out people moving to content from a DSAT stream.
If the item is in-vision it could be a few button presses too. If the BBC
Media Center news system allowed you to enter these numbers it would easy to
be watching Freeview News 24 (or satellite, or IPTV or whatever) and see the
red button and CPN, press the GREEN BUTTON select BBC news (still with News
24 in the bottom quarter of the screen) and then enter the number.
There is a WAP service now on Sky Digital, but I can't see it working too
well with Sky PVR because you can't use it easily, I agree.
But for Freesat (coming soon!) the invision numbers would easily work if the
system does not run on OpenTV and a nearby computer has to be used.
>
> Regards and thanks for the thought-provoking idea
>
> George
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