What we build / HbbTV
HbbTV, since 2008
Team members here built their first HbbTV applications for SES Astra in 2008, before most of the specification existed in the form it has now. The RedSmart brand was split off for that work in 2011. We never marketed it — which is why an eighteen-year competence has, until now, had no web presence at all.
What it gives you
What HbbTV gives you that no app platform does
It is already on the television
No install, no store, no user decision. The red button appears because the broadcast stream says it should.
It is tied to what is on screen
An application can know which programme is running and respond to it. No app-store platform offers that, because none of them is part of the broadcast.
It is one URL
Deploying is publishing. There is no review queue between you and your audience.
What it costs
And what it costs you
Terminal browsers, which are not desktop browsers and are not all the same. No uniform DRM. A performance envelope set by the oldest set still in living rooms. And a specification — ETSI TS 102 796 — that says precisely what a television must and must not do, which is a gift when you read it and a trap when you assume.
It is also the one that constrains the others
Satisfy the HbbTV profile of OIPF DAE and the rest of the living room becomes a packaging problem. That is why HbbTV sits at the centre of how we build for all four runtimes rather than being one target among them.
In HbbTV
What we build in HbbTV
Mediathek and VOD · EPG and themed channels · livestreaming · competitions and voting · operator applications, including the one on HD+ · Animated Switch-In advertising · format landing pages for running shows.
Tooling
We build the tooling too
Our HbbTV emulator and test suite runs in Chrome, follows ETSI TS 102 796 V1.7.1, and stops where the standard stops — because an emulator that offers more than the target device teaches you the wrong thing. It is free, it has no account and no telemetry, and it is regression-tested against a production broadcaster application.
That is not a side project. It is the most direct evidence we can offer that the specialism is real.
Tell us what you are building.
Christian answers these himself, usually within a working day.