S&T to Demo MHEG Interaction Channel, ACAP Compliance at NAB

At the NAB show in Las Vegas this week, UK-based interactive TV technology provider, Strategy & Technology (note: the company's offerings include DSMCC object and data carousels, MHEG application development, MHEG engines for receiver applications, TV-Anytime stream generation, and more), is collaborating with BBC R&D on a demo designed to highlight the latest developments of the proposed MHEG Interaction Channel. The MHEG Interaction Channel is intended to extend the capabilities of the MHEG-5 ITV middleware standard (which is used by the UK's free-to-air digital terrestrial service, Freeview, and its New Zealand equivalent, FreeView) by seamlessly integrating an always-on, IP-based return path. This, of course, would enable delivery of additional content including both static data for interactive services, as well as video and audio media--and thus enable richer interactivity on DTT platforms. It would also enable two-way interactivity, such as tcommerce and voting and other participation TV formats. The UK Digital Television Group's (DTG) Interaction Channel Working Group, which is chaired by S&T, is currently working with manufacturers and broadcasters on a new profile of the MHEG-5 specification for inclusion in the ETSI-MHEG spec and the UK DTG D-Book.

According to S&T, its NAB Demo will show an end-to-end system that detects whether a return path is available, and provides broadcast-only services if none is detected. If, however, it does detect a return path, it links the return path file system to the broadcast file system, so that the same application can access additional content, such as video, audio, text and graphics. The company says that the demo will show how the application accesses whichever file systems are available in a transparent manner. "S&T believes that the introduction of the Interaction Channel to the MHEG specification will significantly enhance an already highly evolved and elegant middleware solution," S&T managing director, David Cutts, said in a prepared statement. "Our demonstration at NAB, provided in cooperation with BBC R&D, highlights the simplicity and flexibility of the technologies involved."

S&T also plans to use NAB to showcase its interactive TV generation and playout technologies' compliance with the ATSC/CableLabs digital terrestrial standard, ACAP. (Note: CableLabs and ATSC have teamed to define a common Globally Executable MHP-based specification for interactive services, in order to enable ITV applications developed for OCAP receivers to also run on ACAP-compliant receivers targeted at the DTT market.) The company says it will demo its (ACAP, OCAP, MHP and MHEG-compliant) TSBroadcaster DSM-CC Object and Data Carousels and its TSPlayer transport stream technology, as well as its TSDeveloper technology, which it says provides an integrated solution for the generation and playout of ITV applications in authoring, application-development and test environments: according to the company, this system allows users to author ACAP and OCAP apps and to test them on a single platform. S&T says that it is an active participant in the ATSC's ongoing project to demonstrate interoperability between OCAP and ACAP, and has provided its TSBroadcaster/TSPlayer platform and integration services as part of that trial (note: its technology is included in the ATSC/NAB DTB "Hot Spot" at NAB). "The ATSC trial is very significant because it proves interoperability between OCAP and ACAP, thereby significantly lowering costs for interactive TV applications developers," Bruce Renne, the general manager of S&T North America, said in a prepared statement. "By being able to run services on both sets of compliant receivers it will allow faster growth in the US market and provides a clear incentive for consumer electronics manufacturers to integrate ACAP stacks into television sets."

In other S&T news: the company has secured a win for its RedKey MHEG engine with Zoran Corporation. The latter is using the engine with its SupraTV 162 and SupraTV 163 chips, which are targeted at the UK DTT market.

Originally Published: April 16, 2007 in [itvt] Issue 7.26 Part 2

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