IPTV focus > Connected TV
Digital TV Europe
April 2010
HbbTV: the pros and cons of standards
Hybrid Broadcast Broadband TV (HbbTV) is an initiative that is being driven by free-to-air and pay-TV broadcasters and infrastructure providers (notably satellite operators) to devel- op common specifications for the delivery of interactive services (including video-on- demand services) over broadband to comple- ment broadcast offers. “The biggest challenge is the lack of a stan-
dard whilst having a huge number of devices already deployed and even more coming. Setting a standard for connected TV applica- tions that will be supported by a vast number of devices will immediately enable endless possi- bilities to add services per channel or per pro- gramme or even standalone services or widgets that could be added to a TV service,” says Zvika Haas, product and marketing director at AirTies. For Haas the biggest danger is frag- mentation. “Therefore the challenge is to cre- ate a big consortium of supporters to allow cus- tomers to access many services or applications from different devices.” Nevertheless, HbbTV is not without its critics.
For Paul Bristow, vice-president of strategy at ADB, the main problem with initiatives such as HbbTV is that they are likely to rapidly fall behind the speed of developments on the web. “It would be nice if you had a globally-accepted standard for over-the-top content,” says Bristow. “The thing you need to be wary of is that in digital-terrestrial TV we have had attempts to define HTML-based standards. With HbbTV we are trying again, but the web is mov- ing to HTML5 – the web browser is moving to support the next-generation of web standards. Even if everyone agrees [on HbbTV] it’s a 10- year old set of technologies.” For Steve Morris, systems architect at ANT, on the other hand, the fact that HbbTV relies on
some as the ultimate destination. A discus- sion around the usefulness or otherwise of ‘widgets’ – downloadable interactive applica- tions that can sit on the TV screen – has been underway for some time. Chandratillake is skeptical, pointing out that web-like services including Apple TV and Yahoo TV have not been a huge success. Valentine of Miniweb agrees. “Everyone is trying to copy Apple right now – there is a lot of focus on apps. I think it’s a distraction,” he says.
tried and trusted technologies is a strength rather than a weakness. HbbTV’s supporters, he argues, have taken a pragmatic approach by deciding to adopt technologies that are proven. The idea, he says, has been to get widespread
Morris: the HbbTV initiative is based on a pragmatic approach.
provide a wide choice,” he says.
backing for something that could be estab- lished quickly “so that we can build and run services and make money out of them.” Morris argues that the development of telco
IPTV has been crippled by the lack of standards (hence the appeal of an initiative such as the Open IPTV Forum). The development of stan- dards-based hybrid platforms such as HbbTV could allow telcos, for example, to develop IPTV as part of a wider triple-play offer without hav- ing to subsidise the cost of the receiver. The telco can jump on the back of the availability of cheap standards-based devices to offer a semi- managed network providing some kind of Quality of Service to the over-the-top applica- tions. “They can also partner with the HbbTV providers or TV manufacturers to provide their own IPTV services on these retail receivers,” he says. Currently, the market for such services is quite small. Operators that choose to go down a non-standards-based route are likely to find it hard to make back their investment, says Morris. “As things like HbbTV become more widely adopted that market will become big enough for some telcos to decide that it makes economic sense.”
Amino's Castley believes that an app store model will be very interesting to both service providers and subscribers. However, he believes that initially they will carefully select the apps they make available to their sub- scribers based on things like brand fit or lan- guage, and only slowly open the platform up as they learn more. “The trick, long term, will be for the service providers to not create their own apps, but to open the gates for developers worldwide to showcase their creativity and
Other technology challenges to over-the-top delivery to the TV include the perennial one of constrained bandwidth. While broadband connectivity is improving dramatically in many markets, the availability of high-speed services is far from uniform. Possible solu- tions include the use of progressive download technology as well as adaptive bit-rate stream- ing, a technology whose development was ini- tially driven by the need for a way of delivering video over bandwidth-constrained mobile net- works. Progressive download (where the first few seconds or minutes of the stream is stored on a hard drive or Flash memory on the receiving device in order to provide a buffer) has been used by a number of operators to deliver on-demand services. Apple and Microsoft have developed rival adaptive bit- rate streaming technologies that allow the quality of the video delivered to vary dynami- cally according to the bandwidth available at any given time.
Keeping costs down
For service providers, it remains important to keep the cost of the end-user equipment down, particularly if the cost of the box is sub- sidised. “The ability to run next-generation software on all generations of chipsets is a big competitive advantage,” says Aulnette. “You do not have to resort to big expensive set-tops to get the user experience.”
Italian technology provider Pirelli Broadband has been active in adding over-the- top capability to its platforms, with most of the functionality being delivered from the head- end in order to keep costs down and give the service provider added control (although Pirelli is developing a range of devices from low to high-end, including one based on the Intel Atom CE4100 – a position currently monopolised by rival Amino). The company provides back-end software that can be used to search for content on the web, and more importantly, can be pre-set to search for con- tent according to specific quality parameters (for example only searching for HD content). “You end up being able to engage with high- quality content that’s available on the web,” says Roberto Pellegrini, vice-president of strat- egy and innovation at Pirelli. The ability to fil- ter content according to quality parameters is likely to be a desirable part of the over-the-top
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