DVB-MHP which, in Italy alone, resides in 12million decoders and that may be less in terms of numbers than MHEG but MHEG is only used in the UK, by the BBC for Red Button apps. ITV channels dropped interactive with MHEG5. If you want to split hairs And I do because one sided opinions are sales talk or lobbying efforts….South Africa is debating ISDB-T versus DVB-T2 therefore hardly ready to dash into MHEG5 interactivity. In terms of interactivity the correct assumption and in fact already stated is that “Business Models in DTT” have failed to allow for the deployment of advanced services across the world. FTA advertising driven Broadcasters have hung on to advertising as a revenue generator.

All demands for OTT are related to Catch-Up TV which does not need an interactive (standardised) presentation engine to be successful it needs a VOD system in the back office and a presentation engine to access the content a a iPlayer from the BBC or other Plyers from RTL and TF2 as examples. The BBC revealed that iPlayer cost 22million pounds of tax payers money just so you can watch yesterdays Programmes. During the course of this discussion the Telcos have started to cut the “all you can eat” offers for a flat fee – both Orange and Telefonica have capped the data that you can download instead and added a pay for Kilo-Octets ( to keep the number looking low). The BBC this week also confirmed that as users ramp-up there is a consequence in the cost of bandwidth. So as the Internet infrastructure is now controlled by major National ISPs and they are trying to offer their solution to TV and OTT Companies offer tgeirs over the same pipes the Broadcasters then adding theirs to the same infrastructure there must naturally come a time when collase in terms of either infrastructure overload or Business Model has to occur. Broadcasters and PayTV Operators have very strong infrastructure control so are less affected by this mayhem.

Ironically the GoogleTV leader is our old friend Vincent Dureau who helped found OpenTV! The TV World is a complex place and changes cyclically as technology software development and delivery mechanisms evolve and new young  TV enginners and businessmen enter the fray.