MHEG-5 Versus MHP Set-Top Box Pricing: What a Load of Nonsense!

By Anthony Smith-Chaigneau

(Note: In issue 7.26 Part 2, [itvt] reported that the International MHEG Promotion Alliance--an organization that was set up last year by Strategy & Technology, Cabot Communications and EchoStar Europe to promote use of MHEG-5, the middleware standard upon which the UK's free-to-air digital terrestrial service, Freeview, is based--recently issued a press release contrasting the success of MHEG-5 in the UK with what it claims is the slow uptake of the MHP standard in Spain. In this issue, Anthony Smith-Chaigneau--who, in addition to serving as managing director of MHP and OCAP specialist Alticast's European subsidiary, Alticast GmbH, is a well-known MHP evangelist and the co-author of "Interactive Television Standards--A Guide to MHP, OCAP and JavaTV"--responds to the International MHEG Promotion Alliance's claims.)

When will the debate end on the subject of MHEG-5 versus MHP set-top box pricing? MHEG-5 is not the same technology as MHP in terms of its offering. MHEG-5 is a single-threading, old technology, offering limited interactivity, versus a multi-threading, future-proofed open standard (created by the DVB) that is designed to combat interactive TV fragmentation in broadcast markets. MHP is the basis of OCAP; GEM (Globally Executable MHP) represents an alliance between the DVB, CableLabs, the ARIB, and the ATSC, and is available for all broadcast markets, including IPTV (MHP-IPTV/GEM-IPTV), and also fits into Blu-ray under BD-J. MHP is not something "shoe-horned" into ETSI retrospectively, in order to become an open standard. MHP is interactive technology with superior functionality and with a huge body of work behind it, and was developed to bring some sense to the converging digital television world. In other words, this latest communication by the massively subscribed International MHEG Promotion Alliance (IMPALA) on MHEG-5 vs. MHP pricing is nothing but comparing apples to oranges.

I see MHEG boxes with prices ranging from £29 (throw-away items--at least when they break down; and they do often...returns are extremely high!) to £200-300 for sexier models with bells and whistles and A-class brands. MHP set-top boxes, meanwhile, range in price between €59 and €300 (yes, that's Euros, because they sell throughout Europe). MHP boxes will remain slightly higher in price, due to the technology being far more sophisticated and future-proof. MHEG-5 is confined to the UK and to the huge DTT market in New Zealand (with proprietary additions, I have heard)! It has, since deployment, never had a return channel until one finally debuted at NAB this year. Now that MHEG-5 does finally have a return channel, the cost of MHEG-5 boxes will naturally increase!

€59 is not expensive in any set-top box market, when there's sophisticated software in the box! I have even seen MHP set-tops priced at €47 in Italy. And let's not forget the limited functionality of MHEG-5, in comparison to MHP. MHP has now been deployed in cable, satellite and terrestrial environments internationally, and a trial of GEM-IPTV is now taking place in the Far East. MHEG-5, meanwhile, is only on digital terrestrial in the UK and New Zealand. Moreover, MHP boxes reside in much more sophisticated interactive TV environments and perform in a completely different way to "pseudo" open-standard or proprietary middleware offerings. MHP has proven itself to be a future technology deployed now.

MHP will always have its troubles, as it was designed to fix the fragmented middleware market. It has to act as the cuckoo ousting the incumbents, and that makes it disliked. It is, however, growing in popularity; it has proven its merit and it will certainly continue to be deployed as people realize that they are being misled by those wishing to see its demise. If you really want to know what MHP can do, you should go and visit an MHP operator--or a country that has adopted MHP--in person, and not listen to people like me or the International MHEG Promotion Alliance banging on about what the other players can and cannot do--in what is becoming akin to playground politics!

Originally Published: April 20, 2007 in [itvt] Issue 7.27

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