[mythtv] [mythtv-commits] Ticket #10072: [PATCH] freemheg: Support bitmap backgrounds used by BBC/Freesat

[Lawrence Rust]

On Tue, 2011-10-04 at 10:31 +0100, David Matthews wrote:
> On 03/10/2011 16:21, Lawrence Rust wrote:
> > On Mon, 2011-10-03 at 12:36 +0100, David Matthews wrote:
> >
> >> I did enquire
> >> about this when Freesat first appeared but it seemed it was being kept
> >> under wraps.  Anything that was implemented was just what I could guess.
> >
> >> Currently I can't actually test this and the other patches because I'm
> >> limited to terrestrial at the moment but I'll definitely test them out
> >> once I get my satellite dish back.
> >
> > I'm not sure how applicable these changes would be to FreeView.  I would
> > have thought that the BBC would want an equivalent service for both.
> > But as I live in France I've not been able to try FreeView.
> >
> 
> The MHEG profile for Freeview (1.06) has been available for a long time 
> (see http://www.dtg.org.uk/publications/books_mheg.html)

I came across that doc first of all but it has little detail about the
BBC's implementation, which is vital, and has nothing on Interaction
Channel and other recent changes.  The ETSI ES 202 184 V2.2.1 (2011-03)
doc is much more useful and applicable to both FreeView and FreeSat.

>  so I was 
> assuming that the FreeSat profile would similarly be available.  I did 
> enquire on the BBC backstage mailing list and got a reply ( 
> http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/msg07628.html ) 
> that suggested there was some chance it might appear eventually.  The 
> BBC have released an open source Java application that supports the 
> Freesat profile ( http://sourceforge.net/projects/mhegplus ) and at 
> least seems to list the resident programs in the profile.  It might be 
> possible to use that at least as a check on the implementation.

I believe copious amounts of garlic, silver bullets and crucifixes are
needed before speaking the 'J' word ;-)

I honestly don't think that using some unknown person(s) interpretation
of a 'secret' specification is good guidance.  Pragmatically the
simplest solution is the best - just handle the currently used
extensions.  Worry about further changes if/when they occur.

-- 
Lawrence