Bargain interactivity
Apr 1, 2007 12:00 PM, BY DAVID CUTTS
Some have chosen the cost-effective route to interactive TV.
There can be little argument that interactive TV has had a difficult birth across much of the television world due to technical, cost and marketing problems. But there can be equally little argument that in an increasingly competitive digital TV landscape, interactive TV — from the essential provision of an electronic program guide to more sophisticated applications — is now being recognized as a fundamental part of viewer expectation. The UK market is a prime example of this, though it is hardly alone. Interactive TV has come full circle with cost-effective technology, proven content models, market experience and knowledge all now available.
Information, such as association football scores, can be presented as teletext using an MHEG set-top box.
Interactive TV systems require software components at both the transmission (playout or headend) and reception points (set-top box or integrated digital receiver). MHEG is an open standard middleware — or API — designed specifically for digital interactive TV services. Originally developed and standardized by the ISO in the mid-1990s as part of the Digital Audio Visual Council (DAVIC) standardization effort to support interactivity and navigation for VOD services, MHEG is a public standard with no known essential intellectual property rights or associated license fees. MHEG-5 is now a mature technology and is deployed in the UK in more than 13 million receivers.
With the latest standard — UK Profile 1.06 — a strong conformance test suite has been developed by the Digital Television Group, ensuring interoperability for receiver manufacturers, broadcasters and content creators. The UK Profile, and its ETSI equivalent, provides a baseline specification that is being extended for other MHEG deployments worldwide. One example is FreeView in New Zealand, where additional characters are required. Further extensions to the profile are already in development, for example to incorporate different character sets for Chinese and other Asian markets.
Before examining the way that MHEG works, it is worth looking briefly at its use in the UK's free-to-air digital service Freeview (not to be confused with New Zealand's FreeView). Freeview and its open standards-based approach offers core interactive services that viewers — yes, viewers, using the time-honored lean-back approach to the television — take advantage of on a regular basis. It uses MHEG-5 to provide interactive advertising, digital teletext and multiscreen video selection, as well as other red button enhanced TV services, including home shopping and games.
The result of this standards-based approach is threefold. Firstly, viewers, perhaps without even truly realizing it, have built interactivity into their daily TV usage patterns. More than 40 percent of viewers use the interactive component of some programs, particularly sports. Secondly, by using a widely supported (and hence low-cost) open standard, market forces have led to a vibrant Freeview consumer model for both set-top boxes and receivers integrated into TV sets. Boxes can now be bought for as little as E40. Lastly, broadcasters — the BBC is a prime example — can be confident of near 100 percent audience reach for their value-added interactive services. More than 13 million receivers using MHEG-5 have been sold, which is a significant percentage of the television viewing population.
Alternative strategies that encourage the deployment of higher cost interactive TV receivers alongside low-function zapper boxes inhibit the development of widespread interactive TV services, as typically only a small proportion of the audience is interactive-capable. Other, more complex standards for digital interactive TV also come burdened with higher costs through intellectual property rights licenses.
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