A content browsing and selection system for playing online streaming multimedia content on a specialized playing device

Nowadays, a multimedia service platform is to be developed where service components in the appliances are exposed in a service oriented architecture. Innovative new services can be created by mashing up the service components. In this paper, the idea is demonstrated by using a system, whose client is on Android phone and server is on Flex AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime). The client and server are going to communicate with each other through a socket connection, which follows a self-defined remote play control protocol on top of TCP/IP. It creates a better user experience by having a browsing and selection system on the phone screen and uses a phone as a remote controller so that user could able to type very fast. Therefore, it does not require the online video/music provider or the set-top-box provider to customize the UI (User Interface) for the user. In addition, it can even work without a screen, like on the Hi-Fi system.