Hybrid Broadcast Broadband TV (HbbTV) is both an industry standard and promotional initiative for "harmonising the broadcast and broadband delivery of entertainment to the end consumer through connected TVs and set-top boxes".[1]
The HbbTV consortium of digital broadcasting and Internet industry companies is establishing a standard for the delivery of broadcast TV and broadband TV to a television in the home, through a single user interface, creating an open platform as an alternative to proprietary technologies.
Products and services using the HbbTV standard can operate over different broadcasting technologies, such as satellite, cable or terrestrial networks. The first demonstrations of HbbTV was made during 2009 in France by France Télévisions for the Roland Garros tennis sport event on a DTT transmission and an ip connexion and in Germany, used the Astra satellite at 19.2° east were performed at the IFA and IBC exhibitions.[2]
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Background
The reception of digital TV and, in particular, high definition broadcasting in the home is well established across Europe. Internet TV and the delivery of multimedia content to the home user via the Internet are also becoming increasingly common, although such content is often viewed on a PC or fed to a TV screen from a PC via a media player connected to a home network.
HbbTV is intended to extend the reach of multimedia content directly to the television set in a seamless, viewer-friendly manner, and to enable the TV viewer to more conveniently access both broadcast digital content (especially HD) and Internet multimedia content (including Internet TV and IPTV) on a TV set using a single remote control/box and a single on-screen interface.
Applications
Services delivered through HbbTV include traditional broadcast TV channels, catch-up services, video-on-demand, EPG, interactive advertising, personalisation, voting, games, social networking and other multimedia applications.
HbbTV includes information services extending the concept of teletext to include video and high definition text, more reminiscent of web presentation. German broadcaster, RTL Television will introduce a new information service, HD Text, in 2010 using the HbbTV standard and the CE-HTML user interface language.[3]
Standards
As well as helping consumers/viewers, the introduction of the HbbTV standard is of benefit to both equipment manufacturers and content providers who at the moment have to produce hardware or content specific to each country to meet the de facto standard in that country. The establishment of a unified European HbbTV standard means "content owners and application developers can write once and deploy to many countries".[4]
The HbbTV specification was developed by industry members of the consortium and is based on elements of existing standards and web technologies including OIPF (Open IPTV Forum), CEA, DVB and W3C.[2]
The HbbTV initiative is being evaluated by the European Broadcasting Union, as the basis of a coordinated pan-European approach to hybrid broadband and broadcast services.[5]
Consortium membership
Founding members of the HbbTV consortium are :
HbbTV is the association of two projects born in february 2009, with the french "H4TV" project and the "German HTML profil"project.
Samsung and Sony joined the original consortium in September 2009.
The list of companies officially supporting the initiative is provided on the HbbTV website.
Current Status
The specification has been submitted to ETSI by the end of November 2009 under reference ETSI TS 102 796.
See also
References
- ^ HbbTV website introduction accessed August 28 2009
- ^ a b HbbTV Consortium (August 27, 2009). "NEW EUROPEAN INITIATIVE MERGES TELEVISION WITH THE POWER OF THE INTERNET". Press release. http://www.hbbtv.org/news/HBBTV_PR_Final.pdf.
- ^ Robert Briel. German RTL to support HbbTV. Broadband TV News August 27, 2009. Retrieved August 30, 2009
- ^ Richard Baker. European initiative merges television with the power of the internet. ANT Software video blog August 27, 2009. Retrieved September 1, 2009
- ^ New television standard throws BBC on Canvas. Infomitv August 27, 2009
External links
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