Media Synchronisation for Television Services Through HbbTV

Abstract

Media synchronisation is getting renewed attention with ecosystems of smart televisions and connected devices enabling novel media consumption paradigms. Social TV, hybrid TV and companion screens are examples that are enabling people to consume multiple media streams on multiple devices together. These novel use cases place a number of demands on the synchronisation architecture. The systems for media synchronisation have to cope with delay differences between various distribution channels for television broadcast (terrestrial, cable, satellite) and Internet-delivered streaming media. Also they need to handle different content formats in use. Broadcasters have started using proprietary solutions for over-the-top media synchronisation, such as media fingerprinting or media watermarking technologies. Given the commercial interest in media synchronisation and the disadvantages of proprietary technologies, consumer equipment manufacturers, broadcasters, as well as telecom and cable operators have started developing a new wave of television products, services and international standards that support media synchronisation from multiple sources. This chapter provides an overview of media synchronisation in a television context as specified the Hybrid Broadcast Broadband Television (HbbTV) specification version 2 and based upon specifications by the Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB) group Companion Screens and Streams (CSS). In addition, we discuss solutions compliant with legacy HbbTV devices. Use cases include synchronisation of audio, video and data streams from multiple sources composed on a TV or on multiple devices including other consumer devices like smartphones. © Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature 2018.