HbbTV and connected TV

Hybrid Broadcast Broadband Television (HbbTV) has become vital to the success of connected TV as it enables content providers to offer their services on a wide variety of standards-based receivers at no additional cost

This year’s IBC will see a host of announcements around connected TV standard HbbTV (Hybrid Broadcast Broadband Television). Since it was first announced in 2009, the standard has grown in both scale and importance with several market deployments since last year, and HbbTV itself continuing to develop with the publication of the specs for version 1.5.

So what is HbbTV and why does the connected TV market need it?

HbbTV is a standard established to harmonise the delivery of connected TV services to the home and designed as an alternative to proprietary systems. HbbTV combines elements of OIPF (Open IPTV Forum), CEA, DVB and W3C. Essentially, it uses web-based standards to create an open delivery solution that works in tandem – meaning it can have a direct association with – broadcast services.

HbbTV has now become a de-facto market standard, beginning in Europe although it has attracted interest from broadcasters and platform providers around the world.

The connected TV market is currently fragmented with a variety of proprietary services that are causing consumer confusion and not encouraging mass-market adoption. Most of the major CE brands in the TV space have now launched their own connected TV portals and they do represent a challenge to broadcasters. But these are presented as an app-based user experience that’s totally disconnected from the normal TV content distribution model. Broadcasters have the advantage of being able to leverage their brands, content archives and, most importantly, to provide services as a natural adjunct to the dominant linear TV consumption model.

HbbTV is a public standard and is vital to the success of connected TV. It enables content providers – whether broadcasters or not – to offer their services on a wide variety of standards-based receivers with no additional cost. A well administered standard will drive a retail market – witness Freeview with its use of MPEG as a middleware in the UK market for the kind of success that’s achievable. There’s a desire to standardise the creation and delivery of connected TV to create a mass market, a market that’s easy for consumers to understand and take advantage of.

HbbTV also provides services that can be directly linked to the broadcast experience, indeed linked to individual channels and programmes, with content controlled by broadcasters. It also enables broadcasters in conjunction with brands, to offer engaging and interactive advertising campaigns.

The next version of HbbTV introduces support for HTTP adaptive streaming based on the recently published MPEG-DASH specification, improving the perceived quality of video presentation on busy or slow internet connections. It also enables content providers to protect DASH-delivered content with potentially multiple DRM technologies based on the MPEG CENC specification, improving efficiency in markets where more than one DRM technology will be used. Version 1.5 enhances access to broadcast TV schedule information, enabling operators to produce full seven-day electronic programme guides as HbbTV applications that can be deployed across all HbbTV receivers to provide a consistent user experience.

Vigilance and a responsible attitude to deployment are required to continue the early success of HbbTV. Broadcasters and TV receiver manufacturers have a vital interest in HbbTV being a success to avoid their world becoming a legacy content platform and to avoid the large investment and distraction of proprietary platforms that don’t have the economies of scale to be cost effective.

HbbTV will be the first mass-market application platform deployed across multiple countries, so HbbTV content providers have the advantage of many compatible devices, but the potential disadvantage of interoperability issues. HbbTV is relatively cheap for manufactures to implement, but some industry insiders have noted that a self-certified compliance regime – which is what HbbTV is adopting – is akin to marking your own homework. Broadcasters need to work with manufacturers to ensure receivers are validated and compliant to specifications and so avoid costs and poor user experiences.

Ensuring HbbTV application conformance is fundamental to the success of the connected TV standard and we’ll see some solutions at IBC that harness the power of this standard.

Keith Potter is CEO of Digital TV Labs.