--MHEG-5 Used on UK's, Australia's and New Zealand's Freeview Platforms
The International MHEG Promotion Alliance (IMPALA), an organization that was set up in 2006 by Strategy & Technology, Cabot Communications and EchoStar Europe to promote use of the MHEG-5 standard outside the UK (note: MHEG-5 is the middleware standard upon which the UK's free-to-air digital terrestrial service, Freeview, is based; it was developed and standardized in the mid-90's as part of the DAVIC standardization effort to support interactivity and navigation for VOD services), announced Monday that Latens, a Northern Ireland-based provider of conditional access software and middleware, has joined it.
Other companies that have recently joined IMPALA include Eight Ltd., Fortec Star, MStar Semiconductor, Shenzhen Coship, Shenzhen Jiuzhou Electric, Shenzhen State Micro Technology, Sidsa, Sichaun Changhong, The Do Lab, Tmira and User Vision. Last week, the organization announced that Freeview Australia, a consortium of Australian free-to-air terrestrial broadcasters, had selected the MHEG-5 standard for the free-to-air multichannel digital terrestrial TV platform that it is currently rolling out in a phased launch process (see article published on itvt.com, July 21st). "Latens is an active supporter of open standards technology and the associated benefits for both TV operators and viewers," Latens' director of business development, Alex Borland, said in a prepared statement. "MHEG-5 is a true business enabler and the future opportunities for application development through widespread adoption of MHEG creates a scale of opportunities in certain markets that we are keen to support. One of the main commercial benefits of MHEG-5 is its complete cost-effectiveness in delivering high levels of TV interactivity, allowing operators to offer a whole host of compelling new revenue-generating services using genuine open-standards technology. This keeps both deployment and running costs low. The scalability and flexibility of MHEG-5 means that its capabilities are constantly expanding and evolving to meet ever-changing consumer demands, and Latens will be aligning itself to technology that has already been proven in the market." Added IMPALA's director of marketing development, Giri Valliappan: "MHEG continues to go from strength to strength and that is reflected in IMPALA's growing membership base. MHEG is increasingly gaining interest from pay-TV operators and we are keen on working with conditional access providers to strengthen our interactive proposition. We are very pleased to welcome Latens onboard alongside all the other companies that have joined in the past few months."
