Interactive TV Testing

I tested the emulated Interactve TV service on a web server to see if the videos and interface streamed correctly...




Everything works fine and users will be able to get a decent idea of what an Interactive TV service for Hexus.net would look like.

The Interactive TV can be viewed at: http://zappa.tvu.ac.uk/~06hodgsonbyrnew/IC/InteractiveTV.html

Mobile Website Testing

After developing the test version of the mobile website, I tested it on Opera Mini to see if it displays adequately on a small mobile screen.



As you can see the mobile version of the website works, however the right hand side of the page is slightly clipped off. This is not a major problem, as the text is still legible, however phone screen resolutions vary size, so it would be impossible to accommodate all of them perfectly.

The mobile website can be viewed at: http://zappa.tvu.ac.uk/~06hodgsonbyrnew/IC

Week 5

After doing some research into websites that can be adapted to work on Mobile Phones and Interactive TVs, I have found that a highly popular technology news site called "Hexus" would be a good choice to port to these platforms.
(www.hexus.net)

I feel this website would be a good subject to convert platforms for because the news contained in the site is sometimes relevant to the platforms its being read on (mobile phone news, technology releases and reviews, etc.). This would work especially well on the TV because users would be able to watch the stories from Hexus's video channel (www.hexus.tv), and then use Interactive TV to skip between different 'channels' from the .tv website.

Here is a mock-up of possible designs for the mobile website (compared next to the original website)...


Here is a mock-up of the Interactive TV content using a screen capture from a video on Hexus.tv, and showing what buttons a user would use to navigate the menu...


In order to give a proper taste of how the interactive TV will work, I will create a simulation similar to the mock-up shown above in Flash. Where the user will click the buttons highlighted on the remote control to navigate and change whats on the screen.

I will develop the mobile web page as a small functional web page written in XHTML with suitable content to give the feel that it is a fully working mobile website.

Week 4

I have been looking into simulators that run on Windows, that I can use to test the artefacts.

One of the best examples I have found for the mobile web page testing is the Opera Mini simulator. Opera Mini is a browser that can be downloaded to Smartphones, but Opera also provide a demo of the program on their product website. (http://www.operamini.com/demo/) This program (and even the simulator) has full support for XHTML, WAP and HTML standards, so makes it a good choice to test any site I develop for the mobile to be tested on.

Another example I found is a WAP simulator program fro Windows called WinWap (http://www.winwap.com/downloads.php). This program is limited in the way of how it can ONLY display WAP pages.

I have not managed to find a suitable Web on the TV simulator, and so I am considering emulating the experience in Flash.