More HbbTV movement in Europe

HbbTV is driving momentum in Europe this year. Teveo interactive and Mediapool content Services have announced the launch of the first HbbTV-based platform for international TV-content . This means that viewers will be able to access foreign language programming on HbbTV compatible TV devices.

Today’s news is just one of many HbbTV announcements at the ANGA show this week and follows the French media authority’s (the CSA) decision to authorise trials of HbbTV services and news that the Czech public broadcaster, CT, will be speeding up its preparations for HbbTV.
Both of these are important steps: the French HD Forum has been heavily involved in HbbTV and so test transmissions will be a major milestone for the deployment of HbbTV in France. The Czech preparations indicate a growing knowledge of HbbTV outside the “core” group of countries involved in HbbTV.

With French, German and British companies involved in developing the HbbTV specification, it’s unsurprising that those countries were the first users of HbbTV. Having had less involvement in the development of the standard, the move by the Czech public broadcaster CT shows how awareness of HbbTV has spread and how other organisations are seeing the benefits of a common standard.

ANT has been involved in HbbTV since the very beginning, and so seeing this growth in HbbTV really vindicates our belief in the importance of open standards, and that HbbTV is the right standard at the right time.