Open Media Web

With HTML5, Web technology is becoming a serious contender for implementing applications that in the past required writing native code. Much of the excitement around HTML5 is focusing on its new audio and video capabilities. So it’s only natural to look at to what extent Web technology can be used to implement today’s and future home-networking applications, such as “second screen” scenarios or access to home media servers.

That’s exactly what W3C’s Web and TV Interest Group did in recent months. They just published the result of their deliberations: a requirements document. Not only that, the group identified a major gap in current Web technology: the lack of device discovery, i.e. a means for an application to discover services and applications available on the home network.

As a consequence, work on device discovery for home networking has now started in the W3C Device API (DAP) WG . Most of the discussion is currently focussing on Web Intents, which has its own mailing list. Non-Web-Intents proposals for device discovery have been proposed by Opera/Cable Labs and the EU Webinos project.