broadcast-brainstorming
Brainstorming for a Broadcast Microformat
This is a brainstorm for Internet radio and TV streams i.e real-time streams corresponding to radio and TV stations rather than individual items or collections of content (as currently proposed for hAudio).
The scope could also encompass broadcast radio and TV if this is considered to be useful in an Internet context.
Examples can be found here broadcast-examples
Contributors
- Chris Newell, BBC Research
The Problem
The web provides an alternative transmission medium for radio and TV stations, enabling these to reach a global audience. New Internet-only services have also appeared. A large number of services are now available and there are many web-based directories listing Internet radio and TV stations under various categories. These directories have to be maintained by hand because the information cannot easily be collected automatically from web sites. The information these directories provide is not easily extracted by web browsers and devices such as Internet Radios.
Elements that come up often in practice
The metadata is either general information (e.g. station name) or technical information (e.g. bandwidth)
General information
- Station name
- Broadcaster
- Description
- Image URL (logo)
- Category (genre)
- Language
- Location
- Station website
- Station email
- AM/FM frequency (could use "measure" microformat)
- Rating
- "Now playing" information
- Schedule information
Technical information
- Stream URL
- PlayerURL
- bandwidth
- codec
- multicast/unicast
Possible approaches
New microformat
Define a broadcast microformat.
As with hAudio we should consider splitting content information from format information. This would suggest a stream-info as well as a broadcast microformat might be necessary.
Extend scope of hAudio and hVideo
Depending on the degree of overlap between the required metadata fields it may be practical to extend the scope of the proposed hAudio and hVideo microformats. However, it would not be beneficial to the development process or to end-users, if this adds additional complexity.
Combining with other microformats
Examples of how a broadcast microformat could be combined with other microformats.
hCalendar
An event or a schedule of events for a channel could be signalled using vEvent or hCalendar as child elements.
Measure
A proposed measurement microformat could be used for the frequency.