MHEG Community Welcomes RTÉ's Selection Of MHEG For Irish DTT

LONDON, UK — IMPALA, the International MHEG Promotion Alliance, has welcomed the news that Ireland’s public broadcaster RTÉ has selected MHEG as the interactive middleware for the rollout of its national DTT service.

“Our principal initial objective with reception equipment is to encourage the development of a competitive horizontal market,” says Emer Conlon, IT Project Manager, RTÉ Publishing. “The key reason for selecting MHEG is the broad consumer choice based on existing product development in other markets and the short-term availability of receiver products using existing supply channels. We have seen the success of MHEG in the UK and elsewhere and that simply isn’t the case for other middlewares. MHEG has very strong manufacturer support.”

RTÉ has initially specified the MHEG 1.06 profile with the addition of HD capabilities with the broadcaster looking at further options as the DTT project develops. The broadcaster will be providing a free-to-air service to the Republic of Ireland’s approximately 1.6 million TV homes and it will launch with the digital teletext service RTÉ Aertel. There will be two DTT multiplexes with HD content forming part of the offering soon after launch. A satellite service – similar to Freesat in the UK – will provide access to the small number of households who can’t receive the DTT signals.

David Cutts, MD of S&T and Founder of IMPALA, says, “A vibrant supply chain is vital to support the effective rollout of new platforms and services. Over its years of success manufactures have consistently supported MHEG, via a stringent conformance regime and the development of country-specific profiles. We are pleased that these benefits have been recognised by RTE.”

The founder members of IMPALA are Strategy & Technology (S&T), Cabot Communications and Echostar Europe.