CE-HTML

CE-HTML is a language for creating user interface pages for Consumer Electronics (CE) devices such as televisions. These CE-HTML pages are typically placed online and are based on a 10-foot user interface for easy control from a distance. It is profiled on XHTML and associated standards with special CE-HTML extensions.

CE-HTML is part of the CEA-2014 standard (also referred to as Web4CE ), defined within the Consumer Electronics Association.

Features
CE-HTML consists of the following internet languages:
 * Ecmascript 262, 3rd edition
 * XHTML 1.0 transitional/strict
 * CSS TV Profile 1.0
 * XMLHttpRequest object
 * DOM level 2.0 (Core, Style , Events , HTML )
 * a number of specific extensions for CE devices.

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.
 * 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.
 * 3rd 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".

Typical CE-HTML code looks like this :

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 (internet) content on a device that does not possess the characteristics of a typical personal computer. CE devices have problems displaying regular internet 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 internet 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, 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. There are currently a number of browser vendors and solution providers that claim to have a CE-HTML capable browser, such as Oregan and the Wedison project which is based on Webkit.

Philips released the first televisions which support the CE-HTML standard, through the Net TV feature in Europe in April, 2009. Connected TV's are also being released by Samsung, Sharp , Panasonic and Sony , although these base their work on different languages.