A Proposal for Open Architecture Digital Communication Systems Based on Standard Media Publishing Apertures

This paper explores requirements for an open digital imaging architecture, one in which content can be shared among industries and applications with diverse presentation requirements. It is based on an assumption that is rapidly becoming the new reality. Intelligence will be widely distributed throughout the infrastructure. Multipurpose information appliances will adapt to evolving standards by loading software objects that reprogram the appliance for a particular application; modular upgrades of processors, modems, compression codecs, and video processing subsystems will provide extensibility. Furthermore, performance and functionality can evolve with the digital infrastructure without making existing components obsolete, in much the same way that personal computers have evolved over the past decade. It should be noted that this assumption in no way precludes the development of single function, mass produced information appliances, optimized for specific applications. — Analog standards establish an upper limit on performance and functionality. These standards therefore, are often designed with significant headroom to allow for enhanced performance in the future. This practice allows mass-market standards to exist for economically viable periods of time; however, components that comply with the standard may be very expensive in the early years. — Digital standards should be enabling, specifying minimum rather than maximum levels of performance and functionality; these minimum standards support essential levels of interoperability. As such, they will form an affordable foundation upon which competitors can build the emerging digital communications infrastructure, continuously enhancing performance and functionality as the underlying technology evolves. — This paper explores the minimum requirements for Open Architecture Digital Communications Systems. Based on discussions of nine critical issues, it outlines an entirely new approach to the design of a digital communications infrastructure and the information appliances that will be connected to it. These issues include: (1) The establishment of scalable and interoperable hierarchies for basic image parameters; (2) Minimum requirements for common raster representations of visual information; (3) The establishment of multiple quality of service levels through the choice of spatial resolution families, with appropriate relationships between the service levels; (4) The establishment of multiple quality of service levels through the choice of appropriate temporal rate families, with appropriate relationships between the service levels; (5) The Establishment of Extensible Representations for Colorimetry, Dynamic Range and Transfer Characteristics; (6) Requirements for a safe aperture for electronic publishing over the National (or Global) Information Infrastructure; (7) Support for universal time-based media files with multiple content tracks identified by header/descriptors; (8) Support for local visual composition and navigation tools in information appliances; (9) Modularization of standards to support interoperability and backward compatibility with current television and motion picture standards. — In an open architecture digital communications system, the content producer should be enabled and encouraged to utilize the best tools to deliver the content (even tools we cannot imagine today). Such a system requires an entirely new kind of electronic canvas, optimized for the inherent strengths of digital networks and the intelligent information appliances that will be connected to them.

Published

1995-02

Content type

Original Research

DOI

10.5594/M00837

ISBN

978-1-61482-922-5