UK industry body, the Digital Television Group, has formed a working group, dubbed DTT Return Path, to develop a specification for a broadband return path for the UK's increasingly popular free-to-air digital terrestrial platform, Freeview. The specification will be based on the 1.06 profile for MHEG-5, the middleware standard upon which the Freeview service is based (note: MHEG-5 was developed and standardized in the mid-90's as part of the DAVIC standardization effort to support interactivity and navigation for VOD services; over 12 million Freeview receivers that employ the UK MHEG-5 profile have been deployed to date). The availability of a broadband return path for Freeview would, of course, allow the platform to offer much richer interactive applications than it can currently support; such a broadband pipe could also be used to deliver broadband video and other interactive multimedia services to Freeview viewers. The DTT Return Path working group, which is holding its first meeting this month, is headed up by David Cutts, founder and director of Strategy & Technology, a company that specializes in MHEG technologies (see article in this issue); other participants in the group include the BBC, QVC and Teletext. "With the increasing availability of broadband, the prospect of an always-on interactive TV return path is now a viable option," Cutts said in a prepared statement.
In related news: an organization, dubbed the International MHEG Promotion Alliance (IMPALA), has been formed to promote use of the MHEG-5 standard outside the UK. The organization's founder members are Strategy & Technology, Cabot Communications, and EchoStar Europe.
Originally Published: September 27, 2006 in [itvt] Issue 6.96 Part 1
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