Over 40 brands have delivered HbbTV TV sets and STBs in Europe over the last 18 months and 90% of the major TV manufacturers, as well as many smaller brands ship with HbbTV support. End of 2014, HbbTV-compliant TV’s will make up half of total Western Europe connectable TV sets (60 Million)

1. HbbTV Devices, Growth, Footprint and Standards
By Allan T. Rasmussen, Managing Director at Yozzo Co., Ltd. | December 2014
Over 40 brands have delivered HbbTV TV sets and STBs in Europe over the last
18 months and 90% of the major TV manufacturers, as well as many smaller
brands ship with HbbTV support. End of 2014, HbbTV-compliant TV’s will make
up half of total Western Europe connectable TV sets (60 Million)
This is the third part of our mini-series on HbbTV, in case you missed the two other articles, they are
available here: Hybrid Broadcast Broadband TV and Revenue streams and benefits with HbbTV
50% of Set-top box manufacturers are shipping models with HbbTV support. Chipset manufactures like
Ali, Broadcom, Fujitsu, Mstar, Siano, Sigma Designs, Sony, STMicroelectronic, are also supporting HbbTV.
According to GfK Retail & Technology, as of august 2014, #HbbTV was standard in 97% of Smart TVs in
Germany up from just 2% in 2010. The TV connection rated is 61%.
A study by SevenOneMedia (ProSieben, Sat 1, SiXX and Kanal Eins) showed that the usage of unique
HbbTV devices on their four TV channels grew by 287% between January 2013 and January 2014.
The growth continued, and in October 2014 the TV channel Prosieben saw 11.6 million unique
visitors/monthly and 1.2 million using it on ProSieben on a daily basis. Not far behind was the TV channel
Sat 1 with 10.5 million unique visitors/monthly and 1.2 million on a daily basis.
The number of devices connected to the Internet (Connected TV’s, STB’s, Media Players, Blu-ray DVD’s,
Game-consoles, etc.) has already reached 1 billion worldwide and is expected to reach over 2 billion by
2017.

2. TV and Internet is converging in a television-centric platform. Attempts of establishing such models have
been tried before, but now there is both technology and business models to support it, but most of all
there is now a substantial user demand as more households buys devices that can be connected to the
Internet.
The HbbTV Standards
HbbTV®1.1 was published as an ETSI standard in June 2010 as ETSI TS 102 796 v1.1.1. The latest
version HbbTV®1.5 has been published as v1.2.1 of the ETSI standard.
Key additions to the HbbTV1.5 standard included:
• Access to pay-tv services with multiple DRM support using Common Encryption
• MPEG-DASH adaptive streaming standard to dynamically optimize the picture quality/bandwidth trade-
off, extending to linear content delivery (thematic and event channels, etc.)
• Access to the DVB EIT schedule table from the HbbTV application to build an enhanced 7-day
Electronic Program Guide (EPG)
HbbTV 2.0
HbbTV V2.0 is scheduled for 2015 and expected to feature enhancements including HEVC to reduce
transmission costs, and close synchronization between broadcast and broadband content on multiple
screens. The goal of HEVC with (DASH-HEVC/265) is to provide the same subjective picture quality at half
the bitrate, or higher quality than current H.264/AVC codec, at the same bitrate. The impact of HEVC on
HbbTV broadband will be huge: potentially halving CDN costs and significantly increasing subscribers’
eligibility to HD services.
In markets like Thailand where broadband coverage is not, fully available it may be preferable to deliver
more data through the HbbTV stream instead. In these cases, the required capacity will be higher and can
even reach 2-3Mbit/s per multiplex.
From the broadcaster’s point-of-view, deploying HbbTV means dedicating some bandwidth to these new
services, 100-300 kbps to provide a service portal. HbbTV service components use from 5 to 15% of the
total service bandwidth. This is in addition to the traditional components of any service (video, audio,
audio descriptor, EPG, etc.), which implies additional pressure on the video compression engines.
Given the cost of broadcasting 1 Mbps on terrestrial platforms and given the continuous encoder
performance enhancements, it makes sense to upgrade the compression system to maintain picture
quality level while reducing the bandwidth dedicated to the video.

3. Other interesting additions to #HbbTV 2.0 included:
 HTML4 replaced with HTML5
 CSS 2.1 extended with a selection of CSS3 options: Basic UI, Color, Images, Backgrounds and Borders,
Selectors,
 Media Queries, Multi-column Layout, Flexible Box Layout, Fonts, Transforms, Transitions, Animations.
 DOM2 replaced by DOM 3 as required by HTML5
 Subtitles via broadband: Uses W3C TTML as profiled by the EBU (EBU-TT-D)
 Privacy: W3C ‘do not track’ specification
 The introduction of companion screen app-launching and synchronisation
HbbTV vs. Smart-TV
For people unfamiliar with HbbTV, it may be difficult to see the difference between HbbTV and the Smart-
TV platform e.g. from Samsung, LG or Panasonic.
The advantage of the HbbTV® platform over proprietary platforms like Smart-TV from a broadcaster’s
point-of-view:
• HbbTV® is an open and business neutral standard.
• You are in control – You do not have to wait for an external platform provider to approve your services
and add it on their platform (application store) With HbbTV, you launch it, and it is available on your own
platform.
• HbbTV is available for everyone – not only people with Samsung, LG or Panasonic TVs.
• No need to download – your viewers do not have to first discover, and then decide to download
your service. You launch it and it is available.
• In Germany 98% with connected TV's use HbbTV

4. HbbTV footprint
HbbTV has established a solid footprint worldwide, where many countries, have either launched, adopted
the HbbTV standard and/or operates HbbTV services and trials.
• Australian Broadcasting Corporation, SBS and Seven Network started HbbTV service in 2014.
• China is currently conducting HbbTV trials.
• Singapore and Indonesia have announced HbbTV.
• Malaysia and Vietnam has adopted HbbTV as part of their DVB-T2 launch
• Myanmar has shown interest in HbbTV.
• Thailand: Four TV stations and two set-top box manufacture are testing/considering HbbTV.
• USA, Argentina and Japan. ATSC is actively liaising with HbbTV as part of ATSC3.0.
• HbbTV services are in regular operation in France, Germany, Spain, with announcements of adoption
in Austria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Netherlands, Poland, Switzerland, Slovakia and Turkey.
• In Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, and Ireland the NorDig standardization forum has
adopted the HbbTV specification, which replaces DVB-MHP as the common API for hybrid digital
receivers.
• Russian Television and Broadcasting Network has announced HbbTV trials on DVB-T2.
• South Africa is launching HbbTV and Namibia has announced a rollout of DVB-T2 HbbTV service.

5. References
Hybrid Broadcast Broadband TV (HbbTV) | Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_Broadcast_Broadband_TV
TV-centric connected devices top 1bn | Broadbandtvnews | January 2014
http://www.broadbandtvnews.com/2014/01/28/tv-centric-connected-devices-top-1bn
SevenOne Media | Connected TV Basic information about HbbTV, Smart TV & Co. | March 28th 2014
https://www.sevenonemedia.com/c/document_library/get_file?uuid=b9110153-89fb-4a21-b9fe-
a025ddf53f86&groupId=10143
HbbTV
http://www.HbbTV.org/
HbbTV Specification Version 1.5
https://www.HbbTV.org/pages/about_HbbTV®/HbbTV-specification-1-5.pdf
HbbTV ETSI TS 102 796 v1.2.1
http://www.etsi.org/deliver/etsi_ts/102700_102799/102796/01.02.01_60/ts_102796v010201p.pdf
About the author: Allan T. Rasmussen is the Managing Director since 2005, at Yozzo Thailand, a ICT strategy
consultancy firm whose clientele includes: Telecom operators and MVNO’s, Governments, Device
manufacturers, Software, Media and Broadcasting companies. Prior to that, he has held various executive
positions in Broadcasting and IT companies with a vast experience gained in Thailand and the region.
Allan is also a member of Thailand’s Set-Top Box Standard Committee under the Engineering
Institute of Thailand.