IIR Conference "IPTV & HDTV - The New Age Media"

Well known industry leader like David Wood (European Broadcasting Union, Head of New Media) or Wolfgang Elsässer (SES ASTRA Deutschland GmbH, Managing Director) brought a lot of insight to the complex topic of new media business models and technology.

Very much attention was given to the BearingPoint Infonova booth because BearingPoint Infonova together with its client Austrian Broadcasting Corporation (ORF) demonstrated the MHP MultiText on MHP enabled Set Top Boxes. MultiText is an interactive TV service offered by ORF since the introduction of digital terrestrial TV (DVB-T) in Austria in October 2006. In addition to the services offered currently on the DVB-T network, interested visitors of the IIR conference could also try out an interactive MultiText Chat service, which was developed by BearingPoint Infonova and was offered as a regular live service by ORF during the very successful TV show “Dancing Stars” in spring 2007.

One of the conference highlights was definitely the contribution of Anthony Smith-Chaigneau (Alticast Europe, Managing Director). Anthony has been invited to the conference by BearingPoint Infonova to give an extensive overview on interactive TV middleware for Set Top Boxes, pointing out the importance of standardization in this area. Especially the DVB MHP (Digital Video Broadcasting Multimedia Home Plattform) standard, has an enormous impact on todays interactive TV services. ORF MultiText services rely on MHP enabled Set Top Boxes.

ORF MultiText demonstration, Werner de Buigne & Anthony Smith-Chaigneau