Link to the site navigation at the bottom of the page
Multimedia Home Platform (MHP)
One of the most important documents on the future of digital television has recently been approved by the DVB Project. The work of the Multimedia Home Platform committee, it sets out a migration path to an open standards future which will allow the market the freedom to develop wide ranging innovative products.
Up to now, digital television services, although based on DVB standards, have proprietary elements within them which make it difficult, for example, to add a satellite 'sidecar' to a terrestrial receiver, or vice versa. Obviously multiplex operators who started services before recent standards emerged, defend their positions and rightly claim that the standards making work, which includes strategies for migration and gives them time to deal with legacy boxes without jeopardising their commercial investment.
The UK Terrestrials have no reason to be smug, however. Although the MHEG-5 API they have adopted is likely to have a place in the new standard, the fact is that everyone will have to cope with regular upgrades, just as Windows 3.1 moved to Windows 95. The analogy is not complete however, becauseWindows 3.1 users could chose to continue just as they were - in a broadcast situation, users of older spec machines expect them to continue to work when the broadcaster upgrades,even if they can't avail themselves of all of the new features.
The need for 'backward compatibility' is at the heart of the debate and the DVB Project, based at the EBU headquarters in Geneva, offers the right forum for industry experts to come up with the best technical for the commercial requirement. In the UK, the ITC are proposing to add support for the MHP standards as a requirement to licensees. None of this matters very much to the viewer who, today, just wants to watch television but for an industry beginning to come to grips with the issues of convergence, some quiet satisfaction is in order that they have managed to get the 'route map' in place.
More information from www.dvb.org (opens in new window).