Option for interactivity: MHEG

Early 2009 we need to start the implementation of a exploratory prototype of interactivity. Only very primitive features such as text overlays and click-through navigation need to be supported.

An interesting option for Tribler interactivity is MHEG. Adding interactivity to flat video files is also possible with Flash and webkit. SMIL seems to have insufficient stable code and following.

MHEG

MHEG seems to be rather limited for interactivity, but has proven itself and running code is available. The key drawback is the lack of a mature authoring tool.

Example code from 2001 is available which gives you an indication of the light-weight nature of MHEG which runs on cheap CPU constrained devices such as TVs and settop boxes. This technology is deployed in the UK and NZ.
The most mature MHEG implementation lib seems this SF.Net project. The MythTV implementation of MHEG is probably a good starting point for experimentation with interactivity. There is also a .net implementation in C#. [Perhaps there is support in the DVB reference code. in-depth discussion on DVB-s and MHEG code with various liks that are usefull.

One option to explore is to move FreeMHEG inside VLC as a plugin where it is close to the mixing of text (subtitles), video, and audio. Another option is invoking FreeMHEG after VLC is done, but how does this work with WxWidgets?