standards

The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) is set to hold its first IPTV interop event later this month at its headquarters in Geneva. Testing is scheduled to take place on July 20th and 21st, and vendors will be able to showcase interoperability to potential customers--i.e. broadcasters and content and service providers--on July 22nd and 23rd. According to the global standards body, the interoperability testing will revolve around its ITU-T IPTV standards, including H.701 (error recovery), H.721 (IPTV terminal), H.740 (audience measurement), H.750 (metadata), H.761 (ginga-NCL), H.762 (lightweight interactive multimedia), and H.770 (service discovery).

The HbbTV Consortium--the group behind "Hybrid Broadcast Broadband TV" (HbbTV), a pan-European initiative that was launched last August and that describes its goal as "harmonizing the broadcast and broadband delivery of entertainment services to the end-consumer through connected TV's and set-top boxes" (note: according to the Consortium, the HbbTV initiative is based on elements of existing specs, including OIPF, CEA, DVB and W3C specs; the consortium's founding members are ANT software, the EBU, France Televisions, Germany's Institut fuer Rundfunktechnik, OpenTV, Philips, Samsung, SES Astra, Sony and TF1)--said last week that version 1.1.1 of its specification has been approved by European standards agency, ETSI and l

Cambridge, UK-based digital TV client software company, ANT, announced last week that Germany's CreNova Technology plans to build its new range of hybrid set-top boxes on the ANT Galio HbbTV platform.

Here is a round-up of some other interactive TV-related stories we didn't have room for in this issue:

Cable Europe Labs on Monday announced the launch of a European Middleware Initiative, which aims to develop a next-generation middleware specification for the European market. The organization says that the initiative will accelerate the development of an open middleware platform for evolving applications and services, and will grow the footprint for and increase the speed of new interactive services. "Our members deliver the latest and greatest services to more than 73 million homes," Cable Europe Labs managing director, Malcolm Taylor, said in a prepared statement.

WHDI (Wireless Home Digital Interface), a consortium of consumer electronics manufacturers tasked with developing an industry standard for multiroom video, audio and control connectivity, has announced the completion and availability of its WHDI 1.0 specification. According to the consortium, the new standard enables full 1080p/60Hz HD video with Deep Color at a distance of 100 feet and through walls. The consortium claims that no other wireless standard combines this level of quality and robustness with the ease of multiroom wireless, and that the standard will allow consumers to build a wireless network in the home to take advantage of the latest content and interactive services.

The General Assembly of the European Broadcasting Union (note: the latter, generally referred to as the EBU, is a confederation of 75 mostly public service broadcasters from 56 countries) has issued a public statement of support for "hybrid broadcast broadband" (i.e. for technologies that make "both broadcast and broadband available on the same television display"), describing the emerging phenomenon as "one of the most exciting developments in the media today."

Germany's Institut fuer Rundfunktechnik (IRT), a founding member of the industry consortium behind "Hybrid Broadcast Broadband TV" (HbbTV), a pan-European initiative that describes its goal as "harmonizing the broadcast and broadband delivery of news, information and entertainment to the end consumer through TV's and set-top boxes with an optional Web connection" (note: other consortium members include Canal+, France Televisions and TF1; satellite operator SES Astra; and software providers OpenTV, ANT and Opera Software), last week announced the completion of the first HbbTV interoperability workshop, and also revealed that the consortium has submitted the HbbTV 1.1.1 specification draft (a copy of which can be downloaded from the HbbTV Web site) to int

Standards-development organization, the Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions (ATIS), on Tuesday announced the release of three new IPTV standards, which were recently completed by its IPTV Interoperability Forum (IIF), and which it says standardize multiple areas of the IPTV ecosystem. The organization says that the new standards cover a test plan for validating objective quality models in the context of IPTV services; IPTV software download sequence and remote management security considerations and requirements to ensure interoperability between service provider IPTV multicast applications; and network provider domains, home networks and the IPTV terminal device.

Standards body, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), said Tuesday that it has given first stage approval (consent) to a new standard that enables an IPTV end-user to locate and subscribe to content coming from different, independent service providers. According to the organization, the standard--Recommendation ITU-T H.770-"Mechanisms for service discovery and selection for IPTV"--describes the mechanisms for service provider discovery, service discovery and selection. Services such as linear TV and video-on-demand are addressed, with metadata that describes programming and delivery protocols detailed, the ITU says.

International digital TV standards consortium, the DVB Project, announced Tuesday that the 80th meeting of its DVB Technical Module has "re-factored" the GEM and MHP specifications, in order to change the order of referencing between the specs, with MHP now referencing GEM rather than vice versa. The diagram below shows the relationships between the DVB Project's various GEM-related documents after the re-factoring (note: the green arrow between GEM and MHP designates the new order of referencing).

Standards-development organization, the Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions (ATIS), last week released five new standards which it bills as establishing IPTV's "foundational framework." The standards, which were created by ATIS' IPTV Interoperability Forum (IIF), conclude Phase 1 of the IIF's three-phase Work Plan: Phase 1's goal was to standardize linear TV service over an IP network.
ATIS says that work has already begun on Phase 2 of the plan, which will focus on interactive services, including on-demand applications and pay-per-view programming. Phase 3, which is scheduled to begin in 2011, will focus on what ATIS describes as IPTV's "most demanding" applications, including multi-party video conferencing and next-generation gaming.

US cable-industry research, development and standardization body, CableLabs, announced Thursday that it plans to release a source-code reference implementation of its tru2way specifications, in a bid to accelerate the development and deployment of tru2way devices and applications. The organization bills the move as a "key milestone" in the cable industry's deployment of a common software platform, in that it gives device manufacturers and application providers a single, compliant software stack for building tru2way-enabled products and services.

At the NCTA Cable Show in Washington, DC Monday, US cable industry research, development and standardization body, CableLabs, and Canoe Ventures--the company that is implementing Project Canoe, the US cable industry's initiative to create a national unified platform for interactive and addressable advertising (it is backed by Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Cox, Charter, Cablevision and Bright House)-- announced a new draft reference architecture specification that is designed to further the development of advanced cable advertising products.