This website is mostly for technical developers. For market discussions please see the blogspot. There are also links below to several active-TV technology collaborators. However, some like to keep their developments under cover.
There is a widescreen version of this page available. It also describes the recently added TV advertising support. Changes in the channel.zip file directory structure are also covered. See the section "Installing channel.zip files" for the quick steps required for the original TV-web channel installation. The above ‘TV screen image represents the ‘example TV-web channel’, described below.
A ‘channel’ page like this can be viewed on any active-TV technology-enabled TV or Set-Top Box (STB), such as the recently upgraded D-Link DSM-520.
This page is for those taking a quick look at an example layout before trying it on a TV; it is also for software engineers who may wish to modify the example to better understand how it all works.
The actual code used in this PC-web page is modified from the TV-web code described here. (Note: by definition, PC-web content can be accessed and navigated through using a keyboard and mouse; TV-web content can be navigated through using just a TV infra-red remote.
This is because TV-web code cannot be displayed in a Windows XP browser as the former is formatted for a Media Center Edition (MCE) PC or active-TV technology-enabled PC. For this example page, I have removed the extra components so as to make the TV-web channel compatible with the Windows XP or Vista-based browser normally used to display PC-web pages.
There is more information on this at the active-TV technology blog site.
Some other functions have also been disabled to make it possible to view the TV-web page on a PC using a common browser such as Firefox or IE. For instance, the ‘settings’ button is not enabled, as it is used to personalize the TV channel layout, including disabling the left-right swapping effect (see the side-by-side panels below). Some Plasma TV owners may use this setting to help protect against TV damage. The swapping effect is achieved with a ‘snap-action’. (Note: gliding from side-to-side was tried, but some of the graphics engines in the low-cost TV chips had a hard time keeping up with the drawing speeds.) Under normal operation, the video ‘window’ is highlighted and the ‘enter’ button is pressed on the TV remote to cause the video to go ‘full-screen’.
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