BBC - MHEG out, HbbTV in

The Cush

With the continuing development and advancement of hybrid broadcast broadband platforms the BBC today announced they're to move to an all HbbTV platform replacing MHEG middleware on Freeview.

The HbbTV Association earlier this year updated the HbbTV v2.0 specification for UK and Italy deployments to replace MHEG and MHP respectively.

A plan is to be developed by the stakeholders to have it published by Sept with the aim of having it incorporated in receivers by 2018.

Terrestrial broadcasters around Europe are also moving in a similar direction, MHP platforms are transitioning to HbbTV such as Multithek in Germany and the recently approved transition to HbbTV 2.0.1 by the Italian HD Forum.

Saorview's Connected service will probably see RTÉ limited MHEG offering going in the same direction in due course.

http://www.a516digital.com/2016/06/bbc-intends-to-speed-up-adoption-of.html
http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/statements/hbb-tv-standards
http://dtg.org.uk/news/news.html?id=5622

FRIENDO

An all hbb tv platform

Is this basically viewing tv through an internet connection?

Could this lead to the start of the end of Satellite dish/aerial tv viewing?

Would it be geo-blocked?

The Cush

FRIENDO wrote: »

An all hbb tv platform

Is this basically viewing tv through an internet connection?

Could this lead to the start of the end of Satellite dish/aerial tv viewing?

No, not in the immediate future.

Hybrid Broadcast Broadband TV (HbbTV) is a standardised technology that combines both, replacing different standards like MHEG and MHP for example to provide OTT/connected/red button/text services now. In the UK the Freeview platform provides access to TV channels online, via a Freeview STB, that are allocated LCNs within the Freeview epg, i.e. LCNs 225-255 (see attached) using the MHEG-IC standard.

In the very long term (20-25 years +) this technology might be seen as the beginning of the transition from a broadcast to a broadband TV environment considering the on going pressure from the spectrum hungry mobile industry. At the moment broadcasting is guaranteed spectrum until at least the end of 2030 and probably beyond but the ITU's WRC-2023 will be looking at the entire UHF band and assessing its future at that time, difficult to know what the outcome of that conference will be for terrestrial broadcasting.

FRIENDO wrote: »

Would it be geo-blocked?

Likely I would guess.

Can anyone on this side of the border, within range of a Freeview transmitter, currently access any of the connected Freeview services via a Freeview Play receiver now?

FRIENDO

The Cush wrote:

Can anyone on this side of the border, within range of a Freeview transmitter, currently access any of the connected Freeview services via a Freeview Play receiver now?

Thanks Cush,

I don't have a freeview play receiver.

However on Freesat I can get ITV hub, however I found BBC iplayer was geo-blocked.

Can also get a working UKTV player on the Android box.

The Cush

The DTG today published the latest Freeview specification, D-Book 9, which includes the HbbTV connected TV specification for the first time. This will allow Freeview to transition from MHEG to the European HbbTV standard for connected and interactive services.

http://dtg.org.uk/news/news.html?id=5644

Johnboy1951

https://www.hbbtv.org/news-events/hbbtv-2-0-updated-for-uk-and-italy-deployments/

HbbTV 2.0.1 was written in close collaboration with the UK’s DTG and the HD Forum Italia. The additions allow HbbTV technology to replace MHEG and MHP in the UK and Italy respectively.

What will this mean to the end user in the short term?