Home Domain

The FOKUS Solutions for content management and access in the Home Domain

Content Management in the Home Domain

FOKUS has implemented an innovative content management system and demonstrator applications for audio/video content in the home environment. The AvCoMa (Audio Video Content Management) architecture consists of a home server and a number of smaller satellite systems. The home server provides a metadata aggregation service, allowing all systems in the home network to access all resources through a central system (the home server) regardless on which device the content is currently stored on. The home server can also be used to provide a gateway to other home network AV devices, such as UPnP clients.

After an in-depth study of existing metadata formats in the areas of audio, videos and images, as well as metadata format for media composites, a set of metadata has been defined to cover the needs of the data types as well as of the requirements of EPG handling in a home system. Based on this, an architecture to handle the metadata was defined and an API was implemented to store, access and manipulate the metadata.

Some highlights of the CMS:

• In-built user and group handling (e.g. not all content available to parents are available to children, manageable on an item-by-item or on larger selection base)
• Extensibility of metadata definitions
• Use of CRIDs
• Metadata enhancement (e.g. additional information for a movie mentioned in an EPG can be retrieved from external sources, such as IMDB).
• Special handling of TV series
• Segmented movies and audio files supported

Demonstrator applications and content import tools have been implemented as TV-style applications, using remote control navigation to test and prove suitability of the system in a non-PC based environment.

Multimedia Message Board

 Modern families tend to have a fully packed day- mostly not at home. The management and coordination of the appointments, housekeeping activities and everyday-life tasks of all family members is already a huge challenge. Modern families require a messaging tool which simplifies their life AND Integrate into their accustomed environment and habits. In the past traditional pin boards were used to satisfy these needs but they have several disadvantages:

• lack of clear message structure
• messages are only available in one place
• messages are exposed to environment (water, wind, …)
• messages are mostly only text
• messages are handwritten and often not easy to read
• hard to identify sender and recipient of messages
• no identifiable message priority

Families should not require their members to check regularly one place to remain informed. The Multimedia Message Board can be accessed from everywhere and provides among other features a clear message structure based on the SMIL standard. Further messages can be displayed and edited differently regarding the context / preferences of the user and the location and the capabilities of the device.
The concept behind the Multimedia Message Board is very flexible and easy to adopt to other application domains (e.g. office teams, development teams and virtual project teams).