How does your pc plays wim.tv videos?

So, when you first come on the wim.tv page was asked you to download a browser plugin, then you're able to watch videos. But what really happens in this process?  What you downoad is a gstreamer-based rtsp player, that receives multimedia contents from the network and allows the browser rendering them within a web page.

Real time streaming protocol and wim.tv

RTSP (http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2326) coupled with Real Time Protocol (http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3550) is the network protocol used by wim.tv to delivery videos to the end user. RTSP is a real live protocol, that means that the media supplier could create the video at the very same time it streams it. This is implemented by sending a single frame of the video at the time, so in every moment the server could decide what is the next frame to be sent. In the others web-based video streaming platforms each video is an indivisible file, that must be streamed as-is.

Then RTSP allows to insert advertisements within the video in a totally smooth way, without overlaying, switching through different streams or other tricks. In fact, when an adverticement starts, the player just keep on receiving and frames, without ever notice if those frames are part of the video or the adverdicement. Besides improving playback performances, this ensures the advertisers that end users cannot skip the adverticements.

Another thing wim.tv player is able to do is to decrypt encrypted videos. Pay per view premium videos are streamed in an encrypted form, and can be played only by authorized users. If a malevolent user tries to save video data from the network the only thing he could retrieve is video of solid gray frames. But if you're allowed to play the same video, wim.tv browser plugin will decrypt it for you. In that case, each frame of the video is received, decrypted and played. The entire operation is enough fast that you'll never notice that is happening when you watch a video.

Alessio Lagonigro

A micropayment transaction system

wim.tv allows the streaming of video contents supporting different business models. One of these models is having an End User paying a specific amount to a Web TV in order to enjoy a premium video content. Even if this may be a premium content, it is hard that someone is willing to pay to watch it, unless a very small amount is requested.

Here comes the need to adopt a new technology providing an alternative micropayment method: iPay. 

                   What is iPay?

iPay is a new payment method based on LETS (Local Exchange Trading System) principles and allowing to pay for digital content by exchanging a virtual money, named iPay point. This virtual currency does not substitute real money, instead it is a complement of that. In fact what happens is that iPay users, called Subscribers, creates a virtual account which is held by a VASP (Virtual Account Service Provider). This virtual account is bound to a real method of payment, such as a bank account, a credit card or a PayPal account. In this way Subscribers operating in the iPay system are able to synchronise their virtual money with real one. Hence transactions costs are drastically cut, since many small virtual transactions collapse into a single “large” real transaction. This implies the possibility to easily express also very small amount of money and so to monetise the services contributed by each player, obviously including end users, even if this contribution may be very small. On the one hand this encounters the need of creators, who are now able to profit from their work, without being forced to pass by classic publisher figures or major distribution circuits; on the other hand users have at last a fast, fair and reliable method to purchase digital content.

The iPay project has begun in the form of a textual specification (http://dmin.it/specifiche/summary.htm#12_iPay_specification) given by the dmin.it group (Digital Media in Italia - http://dmin.it), later  transformed into an XML specification, whose purpose is to provide a standard communication protocol for the various elements of the system, a common starting point and reference for software implementation. The different XML messages in the specificationallow especially subscription, payment, cashing and information retrieval. These were converted into Java classes belonging to the Core library. The library has been released with an Open Source license (MPL v. 1.1) in order to enable the development of further software implementation on top of that.

An experimental Java-based software implementation, starting from iPay specification, has been realized in 2009.

                   How is iPay used inside wim.tv?

Wim.tv allows users to play many roles. One of these roles is the Web Bank, the wim.tv name  of the VASP inside iPay: other roles such as Creators and WebTVs can be seen as iPay Subscribers, maintaing business relations among them.

A peculiarity of wim.tv is the adoption of a license model for rights management. This model is based on MPEG standards, namely the MPEG-21 REL (Rights Expression Language) and DIDL (Digital Item Declaration Language), where XML dialects are defined, allowing the representation of Digital Items (DI) and rights related to resources. A license will contain all the information about what a user can or cannot do with a specific content, which is bound in the DI together with metadata.

wim.tv allows a creator to upload a video and to specify rights to his content. In case of a professional license he will also be able to define the amount that he wants other users to pay for the usage of the content.

In other words this will associate a license to the specific content involved. Then a component of wim.tv platform, called License Authorizer, will parse this license in order to verify whether an action on this content can take place (e.g. a user X willing to view a content Y issued by a Web TV Z).

Moreover since many actors are taking part in the wim.tv value chain, some hidden fields are inserted within this license. These fields, called Encrypted Grants, will ensure that all the actors involved in the value chain will receive what is due to them.

Basically the wim.tv platform by parsing a license will retrieve all the information related to payment. This will call a REST API with all the needed information for the Web Bank-related web-services to start a transaction of Wim Cents.

This is just one of the business models implemented in the wim.tv platform. By adopting a micropayment system and REL licenses models together, several digital value chains may be defined where all the actors are sure to be rewarded even for small amounts of money.

Sergio Matone

A roadmap to converging video services

Despite the rosy pictures we are often shown of encroachment of new media in the TV turf and the support of statistical evidence suggesting that more people spend more time with non-TV video, TV is as healthy as ever. In a recent Nielsen report Americans are said to have watched more TV in 2010 than ever before: total viewing of broadcast networks and basic cable channels is up ~1 percent, i.e. ~34 hours per person per week.

“Conservative” extensions of TV to the web like Hulu, Netflix or Apple TV are reported to fare rather well. On the other hand “innovative” attempts at integrating the television and “web video” experiences, like Google TV, receive mixed reports and see their deployment delayed.

The issue is further complicated by the underground battle around the enabling technologies to be adopted for streaming video to the end user via the internet. In the “analogue TV” age Consumer Electronics (CE) has thrived by adhering to established standards. In the now consolidated “digital TV” age CE has kept on thriving based on established standards. Should the “TV on the web” age be dominated by a handful of behemoths brandishing their technologies as a weapon to preserve and extend their walled gardens?

Judging from the number of initiatives addressing the need for standards in this space, one would say that the relevant industries do think that proprietary technologies should not be the only game in town. Unfortunately most initiatives have issued or are in the process of issuing specifications that appear to be driven by the desire of industries to protect their existing businesses by adding new features while keeping out potential new competitors. Whether this is what consumers are interested in is another story that may very well not be in their priority list.

ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29/ WG 11 (MPEG) has been working for the last few years – and keeps on doing so – to develop the key technologies that will enable, as done for digital TV, the creation of a level play field on which the third generation of CE can flourish. Some of these technologies target:

• New video and audio compression for more rewarding user experiences while keeping down the bitrate
• Media composition and presentation
• More attractive ways for the user to interact with services
• More effective ways to deliver content to end users when network is unreliable
• Multichannel distribution of content
• New ways to do business with content

This collection of basic technologies is very important for a smooth transition from “digital TV” to “TV on the web” based on standards. To make this happen, however, industry needs comprehensive specifications that integrate the technologies so that they can be seamlessly integrated in products and deployed to provide interoperable services.

In 2008 the Digital Media Project (DMP), an industry association based in Geneva, is in the process of launching a new project on “Digital media platform for the 2^nd decade of the 21^st century” (P21-2). The goal of this project is to integrate all technologies that are required to provide a solution that is attractive for consumers, profitable for content creators, secure for service providers and rewarding for device manufacturers.

A precursor of P21-2 is wim.tv, a service on the web that lets different types of entrepreneurs do business with video and advertisement content. wim.tv is enabled by CEDEO’s Platform for Digital Asset Trading (PDAT), designed to offer users all services required to do business with video content on the web effectively and profitably, e.g.

• Describe content
• Negotiate terms
• Request/generate/process events
• Issue licences
• Associate content/ads
• Stream video securely
• Interact with content
• Pay/cash

PDAT is an early implementation of the emerging MPEG-M standard (ISO/IEC 23006 Multimedia Service Platform Technologies). Its modular architecture allows for the easy replacement and introduction of existing and new modules to extend the range of services offered to its users.

Currently PDAT supports the following browsers: IE, Firefox, Chrome and Safari, running on Android, Linux, Mac OS (10.5 onward) and Windows (XP onward). The wim.tv player is a PDAT plugin.
Wim.tv is an ideal platform for the convergence of television services. It is based on international standards, has a growing community and its player is easily portable in such environments as Web, IP and mobile TV.

Initiatives such as wim.tv can provide the video ecosystem the means to move to the next level because of the existence of standard API to access services.

Leonardo Chiariglione