When a Canadian working for SUN in 1991 ended up with the task of writing a new compiler for a programming language, he would never imagine the software development revolution he triggered with his work: the entrance of Java into the world of software development, and the Canadian was James Gosling. Meant for set-top-box development, the language quickly made its way into the way browser with Java applets in 1995, then bouncing back to the server side with Java Servlets in 1997.
But Java made its way back to set-to-boxes with standards like OpenTV and Java MHP (Multimedia Home Platform). In a way you could say, that was Java TV 2.0, influenced by the idea of applets running inside the browser. Here’s a short description of MHP from Wikipedia:
MHP (Multimedia Home Platform) was developed by the DVB Project as the world’s first open standard for interactive television. It is a Java-based environment which defines a generic interface between interactive digital applications and the terminals on which those applications execute. MHP was designed to run on DVB platforms but there was a demand to extend the interoperability it offers to other digital television platforms. This demand gave rise to GEM, or Globally Executable MHP, a framework which allows other organisations to define specifications based on MHP.
One such specification is OCAP, the OpenCable Application Platform created by CableLabs which has been adopted by the US cable industry.
While several companies and the European Union pushed digital TV and interactive TV based on the MHP standard, it never was a success in most parts of Europe. Finland, Italy and South Korea deployed interactive TV application based on MHP successfully, the only attempt to ship a larger amount of set-top-boxes in Germany failed miserably – most of the boxes crashed after a few days and had to be returned to the service center.
Otto TV - Java/MHP based e-commerce TV in 2004
But the ability to stream Java software with the TV channel to set-top-boxes, including the ability to have a back-communication lead to the creation of many interesting TV concepts. Otto, the world’s largest mail order company operating in more than 20 countries even started a project for an MHP based shopping channel on TV.
While MHP as a standard never took off in Europe, competing technologies like DHTML/Ajax or Adobe Flash were equally unsuccessful in the interactive TV world – until Yahoo! announced their Yahoo! Connected TV solution in 2008.
At JavaONE 2009 Sun introduced the final missing pieces of the JavaFX technology: JavaFX Mobile, JavaFX 2.0 Tool in a preview and JavaFX TV – or what I’d call Java TV 3.0. Here’s a short video showing a demo application, and a little of the JavaFX timeline based authoring tool:
The following information was published in a press release by Sun:
At the JavaOne conference, Sun demonstrated a proof of concept of JavaFX TV running on a next-generation LG Electronics TV. JavaFX TV extends the JavaFX platform vision, bringing rich and expressive interactive content to televisions and set-top boxes. It is built on the same family of Java technologies as the Blu-ray Disc standard BD-J, tru2way and other global TV standards, helping to enable developers and content authors to leverage existing skills and tools. JavaFX TV makes it significantly easier for developers to target TV platforms and create customizable and interactive viewing experiences.
JavaFX TV is expected to be available to consumers in early 2010. Java is – at least in my opinion – the best technology available for running applications on embedded systems and entertainment solutions. Java is open source, the virtual machine has been optimized for years, and garbage collection works well – which means the risk of memory leaks and crashing TVs is very low. The huge disadvantage until now has been the complexity of building modern user interfaces with Java. With JavaFX that’s possible, and as soon as the JavaFX Tool is available to the public – you don’t even have to be a developer to design and test JavaFX user interfaces.
With support for streaming video in JavaFX and the availability of a Sun Streaming Server since 2007 the technology is there to take TV, ITV and video-on-demand to the next level with JavaFX TV. The question is, how the consumer electronics business fits into Oracle’s strategy.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
It is a shame that the author is so glib about the quality and success of MHP and allowed to get away with it. All complex software has teething problems but now that there are over 40 Million GEM based receivers in the market MHP can be lauded as a success. The problem with all interactivity is the Business Model and that is why certain markets failed. Java is a good technology and the JVM is the core of the MHP.
JavaFX is a good step forward but the author needs to be aware of the anti Java movement and not get complacent. HbbTV built from CE-HTML is looking to steal Sun’s lunch….it is not the tools that win the market but the engine in the box. Sun needs to defend, support and put some effort behind the DVB-MHP not knock it…They will live to regret the Sun versus Microsoft unless they step up to the plate very quickly.
Anthony, I’m very open to success stories around MHP. Based on what I’ve heard from some companies in the German ITV industry and engineers at the IRT (the primary research institute for public-broadcasting organisations in Germany, Austria and Switzerland), MHP doesn’t play a role Germany and many other European countries.
I really liked the technology, and have been following the success stories in South Korea, Finland and Italy, but any engineer working with the standards back in 2002/2003 seemed to be frustrated. And many of the companies focusing on MHP based products in Germany – especially in the Berlin/Potsdam region – were quickly struggling with the shift from ITV to WebTV and moving images on the web.
Think of the situation with the authoring tools back then: There were only 2 tools for authoring applications – Alticast Composer 2.0, and Cardinal Studio 3.0, and the pricing was very hefty. I knew quite a few young students and engineers in Germany, interested in testing the technology. At that time all the software development tools for web where available at no charge – either as open source (Eclipse) or funded by companies like Microsoft (VisualBuilder, .NET studio). There was no similar offer for MHP authoring, I really searched the whole web! I taught two classes in 2003 in Java/MHP, ex-TV company employees getting trained in new technologies for interactive TV. We asked Cardinal for free training versions of Cardinal Studio for the classes for a total of 6 weeks. It was very, very difficult to get anything from them, and the school didn’t have the money to pay for the full license (don’t remember the exact price, but I think it was a few thousand Euros). In the end two students had to share one license of Cardinal Studio.
And then buying the hardware! I checked the available hardware at electronic outlets in Berlin/Germany. There was no single sales person in the 5-6 larges stores I visited with any idea of what MHP was, and what the value of such a technology would be. I asked for STBs with MHP support, and in 50% of the stores I was told that they didn’t have any boxes with that features. In the rest of the stores they were simply saying: it’s just a gimick you are not going to use.
This article on DigitalFernsehen.de (in German, December 2008) talks about the 3 middleware technologies used in ITV, claiming that MHP and Open TV can be considered a complete failure in Germany. According to GfK 0.1% of consumers in Germany have an MHP enabled set-top-box, and there’s not a single model is on sale in Germany right now.
The last numbers I heard in 2007 were about 3-4 million customers using MHP enabled STBs world-wide, with the leading countries being Italy and South Korea. I’ve to admit, I haven’t continued to look into the development around MHP since then. But I’ve sensed a lot more activity with companies like Samsung, Sony and Philipps building technologies like widget toolkits (Opera, Yahoo! ConnectedTV, etc.) or even full browsers into their latest TV sets.
I am 100% agreed with Raju Bitter as i have worked with Alticast to develope a large
scale MHP project work Saudi Arabia Govt.