Just got back from ‘Mashed 2008′ run by the BBC with help from Multimap, Channel4, the Guardian etc. I randomly deceided to write an app for digital tv’s with tcp/ip connections. This was done in MHEG Plus, something the beeb have been working on to speed up MHEG development, essentially it’s a preprocessor. With it I wrote an app which can read details like your email/any notifications from a website (providing they’ve been cleaned up by a PHP script) and displays the messages on your TV.
Here’s screenshots taken from the emulator (not a DTV):
Discreet/’Nofitication’ Mode with a mesage popping up saying your new notification is called ‘Welcome’:
And here’s some code in MHEG+. This particular code gets the contents of the notification/’Article’ and displays the body, which could theoretically even be an email message or even a message from your favourite social networking app:
{:Scene "/article.mhg"
:Items (
{:Link 1
:EventSource 0
:EventType IsRunning
:LinkEffect
(
// app#txtRed.run()
// app#txtYellow.run()
app#txtGreen.run()
app#txtGreen.SetData('Inbox')
app#txtBlue.run()
app#txtBlue.SetData('Notify Me')
// load a text file into a text object...
waitOnContent.activate()
app#castToContent.call ( app#rpBool
:IndirectRef app#articleURL
:IndirectRef app#webRef
)
app#rc_txtLoaderObject.SetData( :NewRefContent
(
:IndirectRef app#webRef
)
)
)
}
{:Link waitOnContent
:InitiallyActive false
:EventSource app#rc_txtLoaderObject
:EventType ContentAvailable
:LinkEffect (
:Deactivate (waitOnContent)
app#rc_lnkInitSearch.activate()
readData.activate()
)
}
{:Link readData
:InitiallyActive false
:EventSource readData
:EventType isRunning
:LinkEffect (
readData.deactivate()
app#rc_strTag.setVariable('h')
app#rc_lnkLookUpTag.activate()
txtHeader.setData(:IndirectRef app#rc_strValue)
app#rc_strTag.setVariable('content')
app#rc_lnkLookUpTag.activate()
txtContent.setData(:IndirectRef app#rc_strValue)
app#rc_strTag.setVariable('graphic')
app#rc_lnkLookUpTag.activate()
app#castToContent.call ( app#rpBool
:IndirectRef app#rc_strValue
:indirectRef articleGraphic
)
imgGraphic.setData(:NewRefContent (:IndirectRef articleGraphic))
//imgGraphic.scaleBitmap( 200 200 )
)
}
{:Text txtHeader
:CHook 10
:OrigContent "Header"
:OrigBoxSize 500 50
:OrigPosition 58 68
}
{:Text txtContent
:CHook 10
:OrigContent "Lots and lots of content."
:OrigBoxSize 500 390
:OrigPosition 58 130
:TextWrapping true
}
{:ContentRefVar articleGraphic
:OrigValue :ContentRef ''
}
{:Link lnkKeyBlue
:EventSource 0
:EventType UserInput
:EventData KeyBlue
:LinkEffect
(
:TransitionTo ("/b.mhg")
)
}
{:Link lnkKeyText
:EventSource 0
:EventType UserInput
:EventData KeyText
:LinkEffect
(
:Quit ()
)
}
{:Bitmap imgGraphic //must be PNG
:CHook pngCHook
:OrigContent :ContentRef ('')
:OrigBoxSize 200 200
:OrigPosition 50 260
}
)
:InputEventReg 4
:SceneCS 720 576
}
I’ll explain a bit more about it when I have time and when I can be bothered. But bringing the internet to the TV is just as much of a noble as bringing TV to the internet.