All the leading Dutch broadcasters are adopting HbbTV as their standard for hybrid connectivity, in line with most other European countries except the UK.
Private broadcaster SBS has said it will be the first to start HbbTV in the second quarter of 2012, with announcements from German-owned pay TV operator RTL, and the country’s national broadcaster NPO expected soon, following pilots conducted in 2011 by the latter.
The SBS HbbTV system will be assembled and delivered by Divitel, an independent Dutch system integrator for professional media solutions. It will be the first production play-out system that goes live in the Netherlands, and so conforms with the SBS plan to use HbbTV as the standard for hybrid services.
In a related development, the iMMovator Cross Media Network has launched the HbbTV Forum Nederland with founding members NPO, RTL, SBS, LG, Philips, Samsung, Sharp and Sony.
