MHEG5 technology that was considered for MHP by the DVB and was rejected in favour of creating something more modern and even as recently as this year under the TM-MIS Revue for DVB Advanced Middleware Study it was considered as “not able to offer sufficient capability” in a moderm multi-media environment and as it is just a presentation engine or scripting laguage as opposed to a programming language we are again Comparing Apples to Oranges. The DVB stuck to its original decision that MHP was and remains the supported Middleware. Correct there is one country which has officially moved away from MHP (had never launched interactive) to MHEG5 and that is Australia and that is because they have followed the UK under the Freeview model thinking they would get CHEAP STBs. The launch of an MHEG5 receiver in a NEW market is as expensive as an MHP receiver and we have the Business (not Engineering) statistics to back this up. Other countries are running side-by-side tests and nobody has pulled out of MHP except to do NO INTERACTIVE as it is a BUSINESS MODEL issue not an ENGINEERING issue. It appears the Ex Colonies want to follow the MHEG5 of their old masters. HK, NZ, Aus, possibly SA if they ever launch digital. Nobody has moved from MHEG5 to MHP as there have been no deployments of MHEG5 until recently 2008-2009…so the only market that could have moved was the UK. The BBC wrote a migration paper and it is known that MHEG-6 with a JVM is available…so the thought processes were there but in business things well established are not fickle to change…

HbbTV is a concept not a standard – MHP and MHEG5 can both do HbbTV…

The biggest challenge is connecting the return path in a horizontal market and something we have been unable to do in 10 years of trying…there is no technical dificulty it is just a human being thing…MHEG will find out now that it finally has a return channel.