Digital TV Group announces DTT Return Path working group

SEPTEMBER 8, 2006 – The Digital TV Group (DTG), the industry association for digital television in the UK, has today announced a new working group to define and deliver a specification for a broadband return path for interactive television on the UK digital terrestrial TV platform (Freeview).

In recent years there has been industry wide recognition for the need to enhance interactive services through the introduction of a return path. A return path will allow content providers to offer viewers a new range of applications including as voting, games, chat-like services (allowing viewers to send in comments and opinion), and interactive transactions for purchasing goods and services. In addition, it opens up the possibility of more advanced interactive services to enable data or streamed audio/video to be delivered over the broadband path.

The new DTG working group, DTT Return Path, is being led by David Cutts, director of Strategy & Technology, and founding members include BBC, Teletext and QVC. The working group will develop and deliver to the industry the specification for a broadband return path as an extension to the existing interactive TV software UK profile MHEG-5. (For avoidance of doubt this extension is additional to the current version of the current 1.06 UK profile of MHEG-5.)

“With the increasing availability of broadband the prospect of an always on interactive TV return path is now a viable option,” said David Cutts, chairman of the DTT Return Path working group and director of S&T.

Interested companies are invited to join the working group, with a first meeting being scheduled for late September 2006. The DTG expects that there will be international contributions to this effort, which will provide input for international standardisation through the relevant standards bodies.

An implementation of an MHEG-based return path of the kind envisaged can be seen on Stand 1.210 at the IBC Exhibition in Amsterdam. This forms part of a demonstration of hybrid services developed by BBC Research that incorporates an MHEG-5 Engine provided by S&T.

For further information please contact Narelle Morrison, Babel PR, email: [email protected], mobile: +44 (0) 7880 642 257, tel: +44 (0) 20 7061 6242.

About the Digital TV Group

The Digital TV Group (DTG) is independent, platform neutral and technology agnostic. It operates with a unique, yet powerful and effective, not-for-profit business model which efficiently harnesses the collective energy of member companies. Funding is provided through a membership of over 100 organisations which enables a core team of professionals to facilitate industry work streams and deliver world-leading digital television media products and services in the UK.

Formed in the mid 90s to facilitate the introduction of digital terrestrial TV in the UK (it wrote, maintains and publishes the specification) the group is the fulcrum of UK digital TV and has ensured the delivery of a rich consumer experience, a vibrant and stable market, and positioned the UK as a world leader in evolution of this, the most important and powerful of all, media.

The group is presently focused on switchover and the rich media services and products it will help enable. Emerging consumer devices and experiences include high definition TV (HD), Mobile TV, video-on-demand (VOD), broadband TV (IPTV) and TVAnytime.