Confusion still surrounds the two emerging standards in Europe which both seem to have the same aim, that of creating a hybrid internet connected, terrestrial set top. BBC executives have said at conferences recently, reported by both Advanced TV News and InformITV, that it is working with HbbTV (Hybrid Broadcast Broadband TV) which we first brought to your attention in early September.
But what these executives appear to mean is that HbbTV is an ingredient of Project Canvas, and it might have some technical common ground, not that the two might be merged.
It was our first instinct that there was no way that continental Europe could go one way, and the UK go another, while the US possible went a third way, over connecting existing TVs to internet video services and integrating the experience. Obviously the BBC, with the resounding success it has had with its iPlayer, which delivers limited VoD programming to a PC, is really moving to facilitate iPlayer on a TV ‘ in other words catch up TV, provided entirely by existing broadcasters, with no attempt to bring in the wider internet.
The suggestion that HbbTV is a subset of Canvas is entirely misleading. Canvas is about doing something controlled, and not at all open, a kind of internet club for broadcasters ‘ whereas HbbTV is more about facilitating Internet video on a TV set ‘ whatever the source.
In a way these two are chalk and cheese. They set out to solve the same technical problems, but are determined to use the result for different political outcomes. That will make for some technical differences, such as how they cope with merging different EPG data streams and how they handle interactivity.
We have said why not merge them both, but now that we think about it, the political differences are irreconcilable and as much as it would be a good idea to come up with a generalized internet connectivity solution for set tops, and THEN allow some widget based service creation (to create the Canvas idea for a group of local broadcasters), this would be the tail wagging the dog. In the UK the BBC agenda is about controlling the specification of how its services come to market first, and allow the general proliferation of internet video content second.
It’s no wonder that local pay TV rival BSkyB has turned up the heat on Canvas with another submission to the BBC Trust pointing out that this is a breach and divergence from the BBC mission.
Sky’s comments position Canvas as an entirely new content distribution platform offered to a limited number of competitors, to the exclusion of other industry partners. It called for standardization to take place through the UK Digital Television Group and through global technology manufacturers.
The key element here is the way the BBC is restricting the partners that can be involved in something paid for by the public. BSkyB called for Canvas to be open to everyone, but of course, that would defeat the BBC agenda, so if the BBC Trust went along with that, the BBC may well lose its enthusiasm.
HbbTV is still scheduled to arrive ahead of Canvas and if that’s the case, and if the appetite for internet video content on the TV grows as rapidly as it has in the US, then Canvas will be too late. However if it is purely an outlet for UK broadcasters, it will likely find demand on the back of iPlayer services, but at the same time, struggle to find CE partners prepared to put a device out there cheaply enough to make it attractive for one country.
The Intel CE4100 and Yahoo widgets could find themselves at the heart of either initiative or even both of them (see separate story).
HbbTV is a cross industry consortium including broadcasters Canal+, France Televisions, and TF1, German research institute Institut f’r Rundfunktechnik, satellite operator SES ASTRA, as well as the software and media solutions providers ANT and OpenTV.
In the meantime the French newspaper Les Echos reports that French broadcasters Canal+, TF1 and M6 are planning their own merged catch up TV platform rather like Kangaroo or Hulu. Kangaroo never got off the ground, but only because it also chose to include the BBC, which runs on public money. These French broadcasters are all independent so would not run into a problem of using public money to distort the market, through there may be anti-trust concerns.
France has been almost as successful with catch up TV options to the PC as the UK’s BBC iPlayer, but they are all run on separate platforms, creating some confusion and fragmentation and that’s what the new platform aims to fix.