OpenHbb project to present a leading platform for interactive TV

written by: Richard Kastelein

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Published on Sunday, 12 September 2010 17:22

While television manufacturers, television channels, programme producers, operators and broadcasters are striving to make television an interactive experience, the partners involved in the OpenHbb project are developing a world-class, end-to-end platform to make this a reality. Based on the HbbTV standard, the platform is enhanced with widget and rich media support and is aimed at promoting the deployment of interactivity on DTT.

The project involves developing interactive television applications which fully leverage the broadcast/broadband synergy to generate an enhanced user experience for the television viewer – an experience that is harmoniously integrated into the world of the TV channel. For example, by using a service that is accessible via his or her remote control, the viewer will be able to watch a TV news programme and at the same time respond to questions synchronised with the content of the programme. The viewer can then receive the global results from these mini surveys.

This is just one example of the many innovative applications developed by France Télévisions which shown at IBC in Amsterdam. OpenHbb is a collaborative project funded by the French government (DGCIS), the Pays de la Loire and Ile de France regions and the Conseil Général des Hauts de Seine (council for the département of Hauts de Seine) as part of the Images & Réseaux and Cap Digital competitiveness clusters. OpenHbb brings together representatives of all digital television services (content providers, television channels, broadcasters, systems integrators, application developers, software providers, etc.): Streamezzo, HD Forum, IWEDIA, mediatvcom, TDF, Cognac-Jay Images, Telecom ParisTech, Le Télégramme, V4x, WizTiVi. 

OpenHbb: a collaborative project aiming to promote HbbTV standard

• OpenHbb is a collaborative R&D project that has been recently selected by the French government for funding through the Single Interministerial Fund in the course of its last RFP
• The project aims to promote the HbbTV standard by delivering a complete HbbTV environment (interactive engine including support for widgets and rich media, authoring tools, applications, testing tools and validation platform)
• A member of the project, IWEDIA is tasked to enhance its Comedia DVB stack with HbbTV support to deliver an HbbTV-compliant middleware running on a TV platform
• All French DTT channels (including TF1 and France Télévisions) are represented in the project through the French HD Forum which is a partner of the project
• HbbTV related outputs of OpenHbb project are

• An HbbTV-compliant middleware (Comedia DVB embedding Comedia HbbTV Software Framework) running on a TV platform
• HbbTV applications
• Validation materials
• Test services with HbbTV conformance test applications
• Services with HbbTV demonstration applications
• Validation platform