Getting blackout information

Overview

OpenTV Video Platform supports blackout, that is, blocking broadcast of certain live events, according to various parameters (for example, location or device and connection type).

This section explains how client applications can get the blackout rulesets that have been defined in OpCon together with blackout metadata defined on individual events to decide whether or not to blackout each event.

Blackout can also be applied by the encoder that provides the live stream for each channel. This relies on information about the client’s location. See URL Builder.

Client applications need to know about blackout events so that they can:

• Prevent the events from being played (including start-over and catch-up as appropriate).

• Display them appropriately in the EPG.

• Display something other than a blank screen during the blackout event (for example, a message explaining that the event cannot be viewed in the user’s geographical location).

The client app does this by:

1. Checking whether the serverGlobalBlackoutControl flag is set on each event.

2. If it is, getting the list of blacked out events from Metadata Server (MDS) and applying the above behaviour as appropriate.

Prerequisites

The blackout functionality will only work if:

• Blackout rules have been defined in OpCon. See Blackout Management.

• The events to be blacked out include the correct metadata.
  See:

  • For XML ingest, see the serverGlobalBlackoutControl and BlackoutControlRulesetId fields in editorialChannel > channelEvents > event > metadataSet in editorialChannel (editorial-based).

  • For ingestion via API, see Creating events.

Use cases

Metadata Server (MDS) has endpoints to support the following use cases: