Virtual Channel Screenshots

Consumer User Interface

Now-playing and coming-next information (for greek songs, in latin characters) displayed in a semi-trasparent window. MTV has been giving this service for a long time now. The user may ask for this information.

Trivia information (in greek) displayed in a semi-trasparent window. MTV has been giving this service for a long time now. This information is trigered by timers at specific time points defined by the broadcaster.

Now-playing and coming-next information displayed with the MSAgent.

A Visual Walkthrough the Virtual Channel API

Please note that the specific balloon dialogs displayed in these screenshots are inappropriate to communicate to the television viewer, so they should not be regarded as a television viewer's interface, but as a demonstration of the programmer's interface.

Microsoft Visual Studio for Visual Basic development environment showing code, debug output and an interactive television application for music video clips. On the bottom (‘immediate window’) there is a list of the events that have been raised, while just above it (‘code window’) displays the code —of roughly 10 lines— that is needed to implement an application that skips forward a music video in the virtual channel queue and to display a message with the agent, after having shown an advertisement. In the following screenshots, a few of the states and events are handled and presented visually.

The application starts with a user greeting and a music video clip playing in the background (Figure 6). Note that both the agent and the balloon dialogs appear transparently to the background video (and not solid as in the screenshots) on the actual prototype application. The all time programmer’s favorite "hello world" application displayed from the agent upon the initialization of the application. On the background, the virtual channel control has started playing out a music video clip.

In addition to dynamic ad inserts, the Virtual Channel ActiveX control features an integrated system for scheduled ad breaks (Figure 8). At the initialization time the programmer may set ad break timers for scheduled ad breaks every 15 minutes, 30 minutes or any duration that is fit for the application at hand. When the internal timer reaches the adbreak threshold an event is raised.

When an ad break ends the hosting application receives the respective event (Figure 7). The underlying virtual channel control continues automatically to play the next music video clip, although the event may be handled programmatically to change the behavior of the virtual channel in order to display a user interface, an agent dialog, or to alter dynamically the virtual channel queue of upcoming content. The end of an ad break event can be handled to change the behavior of the virtual channel or to display an application specific user interface

The Microsoft Agent may stay idle while the music video clip plays (Figure 9), and can be also placed in the left corner, or it can be even switched off the screen completely. Although it was originally designed by Microsoft for personal computer use the Genie Agent integrates flawlessly with television and is fit for the purpose of offering personalized recommendations of music video clips and in general “to fulfill the commands of its master.”

Each video clip is associated with additional metadata like genre, year, mood. These can be used to filter music.

The MtvAd application uses the virtual channel API to insert an ad each time a user selects to skip a music video clip.

User interactions during an ad break can be captured and trigger additional commercial options

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