HbbTV sweeps interactive TV across Europe

With estimates of 60 million HbbTV compliant TV sets in Western Europe by 2014, HbbTV is becoming the dominant standard for interactive, hybrid and OTT delivery in Europe. It’s a success story unmatched by previous pan-European interactive TV initiatives.

Huge impetus was given to rollout late last year when 20 EBU members including RAI (Italy); RTVE (Spain); YLE (Finland); RTBF (Belgium) and NRK (Norway) agreed to deploy HbbTV services in 2012 and to establish a common market for hybrid television applications.

The EBU Director General Ingrid Deltenre said; “Underlying this co-operation is the shared conviction that only high quality creative content can breathe life into the promise of hybrid technology – and only a flexible, cross-border approach will make it happen quickly.”

To encourage consumer take-up, the EBU is offering white-label HbbTV applications free of charge for its members to customise and deploy interactive services during the Olympics, when audiences peak.

Interest is also spreading overseas. HbbTV is being considered in the US, Japan, Australia, China, Singapore and Malaysia where the imminent terrestrial DVB-T2 roll-out has specified HbbTV.