Hybrid Broadcast Broadband TV or “HbbTV” – the European Industry Standard for Social TV? Or Will it go Global?
by Richard Kastelein (originally posted on Atlantic Free Press)
It’s only been a couple of weeks since the European Broadcasting Union demonstrated the potential of the HbbTV specification at IBC2009 in Amsterdam. But it won’t be long before Europeans start seeing the results – before Christmas according to some pundits. And once compatible devices are out in the market, they say the speed-to-market of applications developed for the platform will be incredibly short… as the industry looks to new models that embrace open API’s and SDK’s much like Apple has done with the iPhone and the Open Source movement online with enormous projects such as Sourceforge. With an HTML environment activated by a simple red button, in the same manner as a Web portal, the resulting content can be delivered over the IP stream.
How similar this will be to the UK’s Project Canvas initiative, announced in February 2009, remains to be seen – and it’s still not clear which platform will really rise to the top or if they will, in fact, reach compatibility at some point. But Project Canvas does bring together content from some of the UK’s biggest channels, including the BBC ITV, Channel 4 and Five. They are working on a more ambitious project to bring what is called catch-up TV and a variety of other programming and interactive services to television sets as soon as next year. But the move faces scrutiny as the BBC is a public broadcaster and particularly from Rupert Murdoch’s Sky TV which is the leading player in the satellite TV in the UK. In a speech last month, Sky heir apparent, James Murdoch abolutely slammed the BBC as an”Orwellian” institution—a provider of “state-sponsored” news with “chilling ambitions”. There were whispers of an an even more hair-raising Microsoft and the Beeb hooking up at IBC, as the partnership was not ruled out the industry titans.
The great news is, for the web development community, HTML arriving on the TV scene will surely mean flocks of coders, designers and entreprenuers making a transition to the next stage in the evolution of TV 2.0 – which may very well provide the next tech bubble much needed in this recession.
And it looks to be levering as possibly not only an EU standard, but also a global one. Asian companies such as Korea’s Tru2way are already picking up on the new standard from the European ETSI and teaming up with global player Alticast. which offers HBBTV with PVR, a pluggable HTML Browser and Flash modules. And Korea’s Kaonmedia has hooked up with Founding member of the HBBTV initiative – ANT in their latest foray into the Asian Market. And Ant pitched a TV portal running a selection of HbbTV services based on the their Galio HbbTV Platform at IBC 2009.
During the IBC show in Amsterdam, Pleyo takes on Yahoo TV with its browser and widgets engine, which is compliant with W3C specifications and compatible with HbbTV (enabling access to interactive applications issued from broadcasting, Satellite or DTT, and broadband Internet networks), and a few other extensions for interactive TV based on the HbbTV standard. The Origyn Web Browser (OWB) is based on Apple’s Webkit and is more particularly designed for TV sets, TV decoders and other consumer electronic devices.
Hybrid Broadcast Broadband TV or “HbbTV”, is THE major new pan-European initiative aimed at creating one standard for the broadcast and broadband delivery of entertainment to the end consumer through connected TVs and set-top boxes providing terrestrial TV players a platform to keep up with IPTV development in terms of Web and TV convergence.
HbbTV
Developed by industry leaders to effectively manage the rapidly increasing amount of available content targeted at today’s end consumer, Hybrid Broadband‐Broadcast Services is based on elements of existing standards and web technologies including OIPF (Open IPTV Forum), CEA, DVB and W3C.
The new technology is also called hybrid television because it uses over-the-air transmission as well as broadband connections and can do a lot. It’s terrestrial TV’s play at competing with rapidly emerging IPTV services which are more supple when it comes to Web/TV convergence.
What’s most brilliant about this technology, from the perspective of social media and other developers coming from the web is… it will open up possibilities of using open API’s and SDK’s which will allow independent developers to create customized applications. Imagine watching a sports program that ended with a page of links to similar, archived programs, or to the Web sites of online retailers selling tickets to the events.
HbbTV products and services provide the consumer with a seamless entertainment experience with the combined richness of broadcast and broadband. This entertainment experience will be delivered with the simplicity of one remote control, on one screen and with the ease of use of television that we are used to. Through the adoption of HbbTV, consumers will be able to access new services from entertainment providers such as broadcasters, online providers and CE manufactures – including catch-up TV, video on demand (VoD), interactive advertising, personalisation, voting, games and social networking as well as programme-related services such as digital text and EPGs.
So who else is tapping into HbbTV at the moment?
Tags: Alticast, Design, Digital television, disruptive technology, entertainment, Entreprenuer, Europe, FiOS TV, future, Galio HbbTV Platform, hybrid applications, hybrid services, industry, institution, Intel, interactive digital television services, interactive TV, Internet television, Internet television services, Inverto Digital Labs, IPTV, LinkedIN, Media, networking, on-demand, Open, Richard Kastelein, Scena 6, social media innovators, Social TV, Sony Corp., web development communityread more
Weekly Twitter Update for Expathos
- Meeting with @travolon in a few hours in Leuven – wonderful city near Brussels. University dates to early 1400's – amazing place. #
- @respkt to @tshelton My favorite tweetologist http://respkt.com/tshelton #
- En-route to Brussels… Listening to old Marley tunes… Drifting back in time… @agoramedia train is rolling along… #
- RT @agoramedia @rickmans: Goodbye Virtual Reality, Hello Augmented Reality http://bit.ly/tRBFa [good to see that Solis giving AR attention] #
- I just added myself to http://MyTwitterDirectory.com – The twitter yellow pages. #mytwitterdirectory #
- RT @agoramedia Entrepreneurial excitement | Agora Media Group Blog – Travel Industry, AR, Augmented Reality, Mar… http://zip.li/JWvH #
- I am going to the Dutch Natural Networking Festival soon are you? http://www.naturalnetworkingfestival.com/ Tickets http://twurl.nl/377p4n #
- Requesting an invite for Tweetboard Alpha (http://tweetboard.com) by @140ware, for my site: http://www.agoramedia.co.uk #
- Building http://agoramedia.co.uk/ – which we hope to launch in September sometime. #
- Building new company in London with http://bit.ly/QTJjx – http://bit.ly/22Z5qd and http://bit.ly/m8dGt – Agora Media Group soon! #
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I am going to the Dutch Natura…
I am going to the Dutch Natural Networking Festival soon are you? http://www.naturalnetworkingfestival.com/ Tickets http://twurl.nl/377p4n
Tags: network, networkingread more
What is the future of trade magazines?
I think trade mags in print will suffer unless they make strong efforts to take their brand to the web effectively.
Social Media, articles nuggets linked to longer, more in-depth analysis, and Social Networking and connecting will play a large part in how people keep up with their industries in the future – and one can’t do most of that in print.
However, having said that, there’s still a lot of people who are not web or tech Luddites that still like to read print – including myself. I hate staring at a screen all day and like to linger of a good read in the park on a sunny day.. or at home after dinner on my favourite chair… which is not computer-view friendly.
The future leaders of the trade magazine industry will be those in print who make a shift to online that embraces and encompasses developing trends in social media or, my feeling is, it will be those who come from the web to print.
And they will do it a lot differently.
With viable ondemand printing for magazines (http://magcloud.com/ , http://www.lulu.com , www.createspace.com etc) on the horizon, a huge slice of risk has virtually been eliminated for those that want to bridge to print from the web.
Magazines can be created from web content, packaged, pdf’ed then uploaded to an ondemand service which handles subscriptions, prints the magazines and ships on per order level. The online publication collects a royalty above the ondemand costs. At Magcloud you might mark up 2 euro per issue on their cost and it rounds off to 6-8 euro for the client. Or more.. or less if you want. Then there’s advertising revenue to be added from existing web ad clients.
One step further has technology such as the http://www.ondemandbooks.com/home.htm Expresso Book Machine printing up a copy of a book or magazine while you wait at the bookstore, the local library or your favourite coffeeshop.
Then there’s Kindle to be considered.
The future is offering a lot of unique alternatives to the old models we have lived with for a long, long time.
I am currently building a web B2B industry magazine that plans to segue to print eventually – and do it quite differently than the industry is doing it today.
Richard
Tags: b2b, computer view, future, industry, luddites, machine printing, magazine, networking, ondemand, print, trade magazines, trade mags, web magazinesread more
Social Media strategist, New Media Publisher and Web Provocateur
G’day readers. It’s time to get a little more serious with my blog.
Please allow me to introduce myself….
I am a Canadian expatriate based in Groningen in the northern Netherlands where I ‘work’ – mainly remotely – with a number of startups and clients globally, utilizing social media and community to add Web 2.0 to their projects and businesses.
My background is in the print media and I have worked in far flung locales from the Arctic to the Caribbean as a reporter, editor and publisher of ‘old school’ paper products before making the jump to digital in 1997, when I formed my first community online in the Dutch West Indies.
Though I have worn a few different hats in my days…
I now operate a very small company and consultancy here in Holland with my wife and we do quite a few different things, many pro bono and personal and others for pay.
PRO BONO – We are active politically as progressives – and like to think we are part of facilitating change and disseminating new ideas with a group of sites at the Free Press Group – which has over 300 progressive and like-minded writers from around the world (20% hold PhD’s) who contribute in an Open Source Journalism format. We swap coverage on Google News (we are three of 4000 official Google News sources in English) for copy. They get fresh eyeballs and we get material – it’s a great barter. And I get the chance to write myself as well as create political Photoshops for the sites. We also host several of them at www.safehost.nl.
And despite losing money (hosting bills etc.) over the years, the connections I have made with many brilliant writers has brought an immense amount of satisfaction personally – as well as added professionally to my personal brand – at Linkedin for instance – where I have had several writers offer their recommendation.
More recently, I have been involved in a couple of web campaigns that rocked the boat for two corporate entities…
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