MediaScape was an EU-funded project about developer-friendly standards for connected devices. It encompasses discovery, pairing and synchronisation for radios, TVs, phones, tablets and other devices.
What we've done
The MediaScape project ran from October 2013 for two and a half years, and was based in the Central Lab.
It is increasingly common for people to watch TV at the same time as interacting with their smartphone or tablet. MediaScape worked to produce implementation-backed standards and prototypes for an engaging and consistent experience across multiple screens for broadcast and streamed content.
You can read an initial literature review for discovery and pairing, or about our approach to prototyping, or a UX field report about existing networked device interfaces.
Our prototypes include controlling an internet radio with a Chrome extension, an implementation of EBU's Cross Platform Authentication project alternative to proprietary single sign-on systems (now an ETSI standard) and concepts for Eurovision connected device applications, one of which we developed into a prototype application, "EuroMeme".
Why it matters
The key areas for the BBC's work in this project were authentication, discovery and pairing, and synchronisation, with associated work around scenario and usecase definition and application prototyping. The work built on our projects about multidevice authentication to internet services for RadioTAG and on the HTML5 timed-media element of the P2PNext project, among others
Project Team
Project Partners
- Vicomtech-IK4Vicomtech-IK4 is an applied research centre for Interactive Computer Graphics and Multimedia located in the Technology Park of San Sebastian (Spain)
- W3C (GEIE ERCIM)The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is an international consortium where Member organisations, a full-time staff, and the public work together to develop web standards.
- NORUT (Northern Research Institute Tromso)Norut is a Norwegian multi-disciplinary applied research institute located in Tromsø, Narvik and Alta in Northern Norway.
- NEC EUROPENEC Europe Ltd. established the Network Laboratories in Heidelberg, Germany in 1997 as NEC's research facility focusing on networking in Europe.
- Bayerischer Rundfunk (BR)Bayerischer Rundfunk (Bavarian Broadcasting Corporation) is the public broadcaster for the federal state of Bavaria
