Two Way TV
Two Way TV provided an interactive gaming experience over several network platforms, most notably NTL, Telewest and Sky (for Channel 4, BBC and Challenge). Both realtime “Live” (played over pre-recorded TV shows) games and standalone games were developed.
These applications were essentially web pages delivered via a STB developed on Java, XML, HTML and C++ technologies
In my time at TWV, I was promoted from QA to Enhanced TV Broadcast Operative - Instead of testing the games in a QA environment, I would ‘test’ them in the Production environment as a live broadcast.
Responsibilities in Broadcast Operations included rehearsals and live broadcasts of Two Way TV games over programs such as ‘Sky Play’, ’15 to 1’ & ‘TV Scrabble’ for Sky. It was imperative these broadcasts were perfectly in sync as customers had paid to play the games – the number of customers playing along with ’15 to 1’ was into the thousands.
Responsibilities in Q. A. involved creating test documentation and then executing tests to ensure the applications could be played end-to-end. Defects were managed via an in-house defect management tool.
Applications for 3rd party customers included both a local UAT and in some instances an on-site UAT where Two Way TV applications & software had been installed in the Customer premises, such as ‘Sky Play’ for BSkyB
The web pages of the applications were logged and monitored in a UNIX environment. The pages contained error codes which the Test Team could include in the defects.
