The iTV Doctor is In!

Dear iTV Doctor:

I don't get it. I thought the idea of EBIF was "write once, publish everywhere." But now I'm hearing that every cable operator has a slightly different flavor of EBIF, and the same interactive application won't necessarily work in all situations. Can you explain that?

TechNinny

Dear TechNinny:

I think you're hearing PART of the story, but inasmuch as I am admittedly a non-techie myself, I passed the question on to Aslam Khader, Ensequence's chief product officer, and probably the smartest guy I've ever met. Here's what Aslam has to say:

To answer the question, I need to explain a little about how standards work. Standards are also sometimes referred to as specifications and one of the characteristics of a good standard is that it is specific. Standards that are relevant and timely succeed or fail due to one key factor: Flexibility. Flexibility is like rope. When you have a lot of it you can either climb the mountain or hang yourself. Flexibility can lead to innovation and incompatibility. In a standard such as EBIF, flexibility is manifest as either a generic (i.e. not specific) or extensible (i.e. incomplete) definition. Successful standards normally start off with a lot of flexibility. Over time, and with use, incompatibilities get flushed out and extensions that are useful get included in the standard.

EBIF is in its infancy. Those using EBIF are on the "bleeding-edge" of the implementation of the standard, as systems that implement EBIF are just beginning to get deployed. The "write once, publish everywhere" promise works for a few situations but not many. One can write an RFI or voting application that will run on all current EBIF implementations by overcoming differences in elements like fonts and transparency that are inconsistent across EBIF implementations. Writing generic VOD, DVR or Record/Remind applications is a bigger challenge, since some of these capabilities are implemented by leveraging "extensions" in the standard leading to completely different implementations.

The community recognizes the shortcomings of EBIF and there is a lot of energy going into the IO5 version of the specification to address these. The resulting standard will be much more "specific" and "complete." Even Web browsers, after over 10 years, are not all consistent and compatible. EBIF implementations will get there much faster.

Aslam Khader
www.ensequence.com

The iTV Doctor is Rick Howe, who provides interactive television consulting services to programmers and advertisers. He is the recipient of a CTAM Tami Award for retention marketing and this year was nominated to Cable Pioneers. He is also the co-author of a patent for the use of multiscreen mosaics in EPG's. Endorsed by top cable and satellite distributors, "Dr" Howe still makes house calls, and the first visit is always free. His services include product development, distribution strategy and the development of low-cost interactive applications for rapid deployment across all platforms. Have a question for the iTV Doctor? Email him at itvdoctor@itvt.com