13.5 Japan s Association of Radio Industries and Businesses (ARIB)

13.5 Japan's Association of Radio Industries and Businesses (ARIB)

The application execution environment used by the ARIB is derived from, and considered a local variant of, MHP. However, early versions of that standard have introduced the ARIB BML. BML is an XML-based standard developed and adopted in 1999 as Japanese standard STD B-24 "Data Coding and Transmission Specification for Digital Broadcasting" [BML].

The BML programming model relies on XSLT transformation of other XML-based formats, such as XHTML, as well as legacy HTML, into a BML-compliant format. The XML scheme defined with this method is called B-XML (Broadcast XML); see Figure 13.19. BML integrates CSS, ECMA Script [ECMA], DOM interface [DOM] that enables DHTML, and functional extensions for broadcasting (see Table 13.16).

Figure 13.19. BML, B-XML services, and presentation.

Table 13.16. BML Components

Function	Standard
Markup Format	XHTML 1.0
Presentation	CSS 1.0 and 2.0
Script	ECMA Script with DOM 1 (and partly 2)
Procedural	Java, PersonalJava, JavaTV, JMF
Extensions	Synchronization, Automatic Update, Control of Video and Audio, Remote Control support, Return channel support

ARIB introduces some color extensions to CSS. This includes the use of the YCbCr + alpha transparency, and the addition of index- color designation. In addition, because the fonts of rarely used characters are often not shipped with receivers, they should be downloaded for the document where they used.) ARIB specifies the registration of Dynamically Redefinable Character Sets (DRCS).

Figure 13.20 depicts the architecture and protocol stack. Multimedia services which are described using the BML coding scheme and can be directly processed by the BML browser consist of monomedia representation data, such as bitmap, audio, character and graphics, and multimedia representation data that integrate and control the monomedia data. Content delivery utilizes the DSM-CC carousel and IP networks. Control via interaction path is assumed to serve not only the acquisition of the contents but also simple transmission control (e.g., order submission, polls , quizzes and so on).

Figure 13.20. ARIB architecture and protocol stack.