Digital TV Labs, which provides independent, specialised receiver conformance products and services, has today announced that it is the first HbbTV test centre officially registered by the HbbTV Consortium. The Consortium announced the release of the official HbbTV 1.1.1 Test Suite in August this year, key to HbbTV certification.
Digital TV Labs is the first lab officially licensed to certify compliance with the HbbTV 1.1.1 test suite for the large number of HbbTV-enabled iDTVs and set-top boxes being launched to support the fast-growing HbbTV services. Digital TV Labs can provide test reports in hours rather than days using the highly automated Ligada iSuite test harness.
Additionally using the company’s HbbTV 1.5 test suite incorporating DASH support, compliance testing can be provided for the HbbTV requirements of UK D-Book 7B, and for the French TNT2.0 HbbTV platform. Digital TV Labs has been very closely involved with the development of the official HbbTV Test Suite against the v1.1.1 specification from within the HbbTV Consortium and has authored nearly 50 per cent of its tests.
Digital TV Labs has used its market-leading expertise to develop its Ligada iSuite family of products that provide comprehensive HbbTV conformance testing. Earlier this year the company announced its full support for the official release of the HbbTV Test Suite via its advanced Ligada iSuite test harness.
In addition, Ligada iSuite also includes a complete test suite for HbbTV v1.5, the latest published version of the connected TV standard including coverage of MPEG DASH and underlying OIPF test cases for accessing EPG data. Ligada also supports country-specific profiles of HbbTV that are beginning to filter into the market, including for example test cases covering Marlin and PlayReady DRM systems for the French TNT 2.0 platform.
With advanced features such as automation, deferred analysis, its intuitive UI and the inclusion of HbbTV test cases linked to the individual test assertions, Ligada significantly increases development productivity, and fully supports DVB-T/T2/C/S/S2 HbbTV receivers. 2012 has also seen the company launch Ligada Validator, the world’s first HbbTV application testing tool.
Keith Potter, Digital TV Labs CEO, says, “We are very pleased to be the first Registered HbbTV Test Centre. We believe HbbTV conformance testing is vital to ensure interoperability of this fast-growing hybrid technology that is being widely adopted by broadcasters. With our world-wide coverage of DVB and ISDB-T broadcast testing services including Freeview in the UK and now Dolby technologies, Digital TV Labs provides a unique one-stop shop testing service both in our UK and Hong Kong labs”.
Digital TV Labs leads the world in testing hybrid, OTT and HbbTV receivers and is active in a number of industry stakeholder groups, including chairing the UK Connected TV Testing Group and chairing the HbbTV Testing Group.
With offices in Asia and Europe and test services covering Europe, Australasia, ASEAN, Africa and now South America, Digital TV Labs’ international reach is unrivalled.