CE-HTML is part of the CEA-2014 standard (also referred to as "Web4CE" which is short for Web for Consumer Electronics),[2] defined within the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA).[3]
Features
CE-HTML consists of the following internet languages:
CE-HTML can both be used in-home through UPnP as via the Internet. It allows the content creator to use the common and known languages in the web to define a user interface that can be controlled on a CE device. A CE-HTML client typically consists of a web browser adapted for the CE-HTML standard running on a consumer electronics device.
CE-HTML offers specific extensions for these browsers such as :
Multi-tap or other CE-specific alpha-numeric input support, by making use of the CSS3 input-format tag.[12]
Media (audio/video) playout through the use of an audio/video scripting object.
Operation via remote control (spatial navigation) using the up, down, left, right and OK keys
Client capability matching – to match the client capabilities to the user interfaces that the server offers. For this purpose, each CE-HTML compliant client is making use of a capability profile. This profile, placed in the user-agent string of the client, lets the server know what part of CE-HTML is supported by the client. The server in turn transmits its capabilities in a so-called "XML UI Listing" so the client can choose between the various CE-HTML user interfaces the server offers.
User interface profiles for usage on CE devices such as a television. These are predefined capability profiles on which a CE-HTML client can base its capabilities. They define e.g. the fonts supported, screen-size of the device and the media that is supported by the a/v scripting object in the device. All profiles are based on a 10-foot user interface.
Third-party notifications which allow a client to poll for messages from an external server, and display these to the user regardless of the currently displayed user interface.
A specific new MIME-type for CE-HTML content: "application/ce-html+xml".
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN""ce-html-1.0-transitional.dtd"><htmlxmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><head><title>CE-HTML</title></head><bodyonload="document.getElementById('myvid').play(1);">
CE-HTML a/v object:<br/><objecttype="video/mp4"id="myvid"data="myvideo.mp4"width="640"height="480"></object></body></html>
History
CE-HTML was developed within the Consumer Electronics Association R7WG9 working group – consisting of a number of CE-manufacturers – to formulate an answer to the problem of displaying HTML (web) content on a device that does not possess the characteristics of a typical personal computer.[14]
CE devices have problems displaying regular web pages because these pages make use of:
small fonts and images, not readable from a distance as when experienced from a TV or set-top box
only mouse or keyboard based navigation, not navigable using remote control
no highlight on the navigable elements so a user cannot see the element they navigate
many non-portable browser specific extensions (DOM level 0/legacy DOM)
no standard audio/video object implementation
the use of proprietary – not CE-compatible – extensions such as Adobe Flash
Further difficulties with using a CE device to display web content are caused by the fact that CE devices typically have different capabilities such as different resolutions, remote controls and audio/video codecs.
Use
CE-HTML is increasingly used within other standards, such as the Open IPTV Forum,[15] the Digital Living Network Alliance (as of version 2) and HbbTV.
Some research suggests that CEA-2014 (of which CE-HTML is an important part) will be one of the key technologies in the living room internet experience.[16]
There are currently a number of browser vendors and solution providers that claim to have a CE-HTML capable browser, such as Oregan[17] developed by Oregan Networks Ltd and the Wedison project[18] which is based on Webkit.
Philips released the first devices which support the CE-HTML standard[19] through the Net TV feature in Europe in April, 2009,[20][21] which in 2010[22] expanded to include Sharp[23] and Loewe[24] platforms.
Smart TV (sometimes referred to as Connected TV or Hybrid TV) devices are also being released by Samsung,[25]Panasonic[26] and Sony,[27] although these base their work on many other programming languages.[28][29][30]
^Andrews, Robert (1 September 2008). "Philips demoing Net TV". Paidcontent.co.uk. Archived from the original on 1 June 2009. Retrieved 19 October 2011.
