The key activity of the STORit project,
started in March 1998, is the definition, implementation and promotion of TV Anytime.
The concepts were first launched in DAVIC, which ceased to exist in September 1999, and
were subsequently picked up in the TV Anytime forum, started at DAVIC's funeral party. The
continuation of the TV Anytime work in a new group was an initiative of BBC and Philips,
both from the STORit project, NDS and EBU.
In addition to the TV Anytime concept development, implementation of a demonstrator system
and validation of the concepts are a major part of the project's efforts.
All this culminated in the STORit participation in IBC99, where the exhibition of the
STORit demonstrator, a paper presentation and a dedicated panel session together created
much attention and enthusiasm for the concepts and the new TV Anytime forum. This resulted
in much increased attendance at the first forum meeting after IBC, and the participation
of now some 30 companies in the forum.
This report describes in some detail our activities at the IBC, and the results achieved.
Especially, the STORit demonstrator and the TV Anytime system concepts underlying it are
described.
The goal we set ourselves for the IBC99 were described in deliverable #7 as:
"To focus interest amongst broadcasters and industry in producing a TV Anytime metadata and protocol specification"
We will approach this in several ways, by
- submitting a joint paper on TV Anytime (it is already clear there will be papers by others as well);
- speaking at an IBC workshop session on home-storage technologies; and
- by mounting a comprehensive demonstration in the IBC New Technology Campus.
These three sub-goals are easily measurable, in order to evaluate our success at IBC afterwards. But the real criterion for success will be the realisation of our main goal mentioned above, raising interest among broadcasters and industry for TV Anytime, is more difficult to quantify. A good result would be if after the IBC, we have a group of partners, say at least four hard-core members and another four less active contributors, participating in the design of a TV Anytime spec. These should ideally be well-recognised parties in DAVIC and DVB/ATSC, including broadcasters and industries.
The next chapters will show that this has all been achieved quite successfully, but in short: both the paper and panel sessions were very well attended and raised much enthusiasm, the demonstration at the new technology campus received much attention, and the number of companies participating in the TV Anytime is now about 30, which to a large extent is due to the IBC success and the publicity surrounding it.