OpenTV ENTera & OpenTV Platform Documentation

Messages

Overview

The Messaging Service allows you to send notifications to open devices (iOS and Android). It consists of two modules:

  • Open Device Messaging (ODM) – handles registration of open devices with DMM. It does this automatically – when a client app calls ODM to register the device, ODM automatically registers it with DMM.

  • Device Messaging Manager (DMM) – handles creation and management of topics, subscribing devices to topics, and sending notifications to topics or devices.

Messaging is organised around the concept of topics. Once a device is registered with the service, you can subscribe it to various topics that you have defined. There is also a default topic (called GlobalTopicForAllDevices) to which all devices are automatically suscribed.

You can send messages to all the devices that are subscribed to a particular topic or to individual devices.

Messaging uses Google Firebase, Amazon Simple Notification System (SNS), and Amazon Device Messaging, which together allow reliable sending of notifications to iOS, Android, and FireTV devices.

OpenTV Video Platform uses this service itself to notify clients of metadata changes (such as EPG schedule changes). See Metadata change alerts.

Prerequisites

Google Firebase setup

Messaging uses Google Firebase. You must set up the Google Firebase instance so that it belongs to you and so that you have access to Firebase Analytics. See Setting up Google Firebase.

Registering devices with Firebase or Amazon Device Messaging

Before a device registers with ODM, it must register with Firebase or Amazon Device Messaging, depending on the device:

  • iOS and Android devices must register with Firebase.

  • Amazon (that is, FireTV) devices must register with Amazon Device Messaging.

Supported use cases

The following use cases are supported:

Message length

Maximum message length depends on the device, where the notification is displayed (that is, on the lock screen or in the notification centre/drawer), and the device orientation, as explained in the tables in the following subsections.

iOS


Device

Display

Lock screen – portrait

Lock screen – landscape

Notification Center

Banner style

Alert view

iPhone 6/6S/7 Plus

5.5 in (140 mm) 1920x1080 px at 401 ppi

156 chars

N/A

156 chars

98 chars

Displayed 1283 chars, scroll for more

iPhone 6/6S/7

4.7 in (120 mm) 1334x750 px at 326 ppi

148 chars

N/A

148 chars

89 chars

Displayed 1217 chars, scroll for more

iPhone 5/5C/5S

iPod touch 5th/6th gen

4 in (100 mm) 1136x640 px at 326 ppi

119 chars

N/A

119 chars

74 chars

1013 chars (no scroll)

iPhone 4/4S

iPod touch 4th gen (A1367)

3.5 in (89 mm) 960x640 px at 326 ppi

114 chars

N/A

166 chars

43 chars

153 chars (no scroll)

iPad Mini touch 1st gen (A1432)

7.9 in (200 mm) 1024x768 px at 163 ppi

211 chars

220 chars

229 chars

124 chars

Portrait: 1957 chars, landscape: 1417 chars

Android


Device

Display

Lock screen – portrait

Lock screen – landscape

Notification drawer DefaultNotification Big Text Style

Notification drawer SystemNotification

Nexus 4 phone

4.7 in (120 mm) 768x1280 px at 320 ppi

40 chars

N/A

482 chars

40 chars

Nexus 5 phone

4.95 in (126 mm) 1080x1920 px at 445 ppi

37 chars

N/A

444 chars

37 chars

Nexus 6 phone

5.96 in (151 mm) 1440x2560 px at 493 ppi

37 chars

N/A

444 chars

37 chars

Nexus 5X phone

5.2 in (130 mm) 1080x1920 px at 423 ppi

46 chars

N/A

562 chars

46 chars

Nexus 6P phone

5.7 in (140 mm) 1440x2560 px at 518 ppi

37 chars

N/A

444 chars

37 chars

Nexus 7 tablet 2013 version

7.02 (178 mm) 1920x1200 px at 323 pp

42 chars

N/A

509 chars

42 chars

Nexus 9 tablet

8.9 in (230 mm) 2048x1536 px at 287 ppi

44 chars

44 chars 

536 chars

44 chars

Limitations

  • You are responsible for handling the language of notifications that you send. OpenTV Platform does not have an automated mechanism to select the message language based on the device’s language settings.

  • Currently, no provision/API is available in OpenTV Platform to unregister a device and to stop receiving notifications. This means that a device will continue to get notifications even after the app has been uninstalled.

  • OpenTV Platform does not automatically purge device registrations.

See also

The API documentation for DMM and ODM is available here: