Hybrid Broadcast Broadband TV (HbbTV) is both an industry standard (European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) TS 102 796) and a promotional initiative for hybrid digital television to harmonise the broadcast, Internet Protocol Television (IPTV), and broadband delivery of entertainment to the end consumer through connected TVs (smart TVs) and set-top boxes. The HbbTV Association, comprising digital broadcasting and Internet industry companies, has established a standard for the delivery of broadcast TV and broadband TV to the home, through a single user interface, creating an open platform as an alternative to proprietary technologies. Products and services using the HbbTV standard can operate over different broadcasting technologies, such as satellite, cable, or terrestrial networks. HbbTV can show digital television content from a number of different sources including traditional broadcast TV, Internet, and connected devices in the home. To watch hybrid digital TV, consumers will need a hybrid IPTV set-top box or Smart TV with a range of input connectors, including Ethernet as well as at least one tuner for receiving broadcast TV signals. The tuner can be digital terrestrial television (DVB-T, DVB-T2), digital cable (DVB-C, DVB-C2) or digital satellite (DVB-S, DVB-S2).
History The HbbTV Consortium (later HbbTV Association) was born in February 2009 from the French H4TV project and the German HTML profil project. HbbTV was first demonstrated in 2009, in France by France Télévisions and two developers of set-top box technologies, Inverto Digital Labs of Luxembourg, and Pleyo of France, for the Roland Garros tennis sport event on a DTT transmission and an IP connection and in Germany using the Astra satellite at 19.2° east during the IFA and IBC exhibitions. In May 2011, in an email sent on behalf of the HbbTV Consortium steering group, supporters of the consortium were invited to become full members. The transitional arrangements towards the opening of membership would involve withdrawal of a number of privileges, including participation in meetings and contribution to further versions of the specification, from supporters that did not sign up. The cost of membership was around €7,000 for the first year. In June 2014, the HbbTV Association merged with the Open IPTV Forum, a similar industry organisation for end-to-end Internet Protocol television (IPTV) services formed in 2007, which worked closely with the HbbTV initiative on browser and media specifications for network-connected televisions and set-top boxes. The two initiatives were combined under the HbbTV Association's banner because the markets for IPTV, OTT and hybrid broadcast and broadband TV are converging. In September 2016 it was announced that the Smart TV Alliance, founded in 2012 by LG Electronics, Panasonic, Toshiba and TP Vision, was to merge with HbbTV, extending the scope of the HbbTV specification to address over-the-top services and to streamline standards. The merger was expected to be finalised within a year.
Applications and consumer products Services delivered through HbbTV include enhanced teletext, catch-up services, video-on-demand, EPG, interactive advertising, personalisation, voting, games, social networking, and other multimedia applications. At the May 2010 Broadcast and Beyond Conference in London, Thomas Wrede, VP Product Management Media at SES, said that he expected HbbTV devices to be launched commercially from June 2010 with a consumer market introduction at the IFA consumer electronics trade fair in Berlin in September 2010. Wrede also noted that Humax and Videoweb both had conformant products and that at the then-recent ANGA Cable trade fair in Cologne, 12 manufacturers exhibited HbbTV devices, with another six working on product introduction. In March 2019 Panasonic launched the first commercial deployment of the HbbTV "OpApp" operator App enabling Panasonic 2019 smart TVs to receive services from the high-definition satellite television platform for German-speaking users, HD+ without the set-top box, CI module or smartcard previously required. With the app, the TV is only required to be connected to a satellite dish pointing at Astra 19.2°E and to the internet. The OpApp also offers HD+ viewers an 'instant restart' function, direct access to catch-up TV services and an interactive, customisable programme guide. Two weeks after Panasonic's introduction of the app, Samsung also offered the app's integrated access to HD+ on its 2019 TVs. The OpApp acts like a virtual set-top box inside the smart TV so platform operators can provide a branded, uniform interface across different manufacturers.
Benefits HbbTV devices enable consumers to view all of these advanced services on their TV, via a single device. In addition to a broader range of content from TV providers – ranging from traditional broadcast TV, video on-demand and catch-up TV services, like BBC iPlayer – hybrid digital TV also provides consumers with access to user-generated content either stored on an external hard drive, or cloud storage, and to a range of advanced interactive services and Internet applications. Hybrid set-top boxes are increasingly commonplace amongst pay-TV operators, as they look to meet the changing media consumption trends for more video content, advanced interactivity and internet applications, like social networking. Operators like n, a division of ITI Neovision in Poland, and Telekom Austria are two of the leaders in the deployment of hybrid set-top boxes. The 2010 IPTV World Forum Awards recognized a hybrid solution as the best interactive TV service/application: the solution, developed by Advanced Digital Broadcast, was the first three-way hybrid platform that enables content delivered via satellite, terrestrial and Ethernet networks to be viewed on a television.
Association membership The HbbTV consortium has over 75 supporting members from the CE and broadcast industries, including:
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