The Multimedia Home Platform is a Broadcast Engineering - World Edition special issue.

With so many new technologies, it takes time for the real benefits to be understood and even longer before these benefits reach the public. DTV is no exception. 16:9 good quality pictures are great, as is the digital sound. But some say this is appreciated only for the first 10 minutes or so of viewing. What is new are the added services, ‘super’ teletext with beautiful fonts, stylish graphics, EPGs and, most important, interactivity. Leaving aside the multitude of channels, these added services hold the key to making the real digital difference.

These supplements have featured the Multimedia Home Platform (MHP) several times already, but things are moving on. Last September, major German broadcasters agreed to a ‘rapid introduction’ of MHP. Since last August, MHP is actually being publicly transmitted in Finland, making it the first in the world to do so. With MHP becoming a reality, it is time to look again at this important technology — this time with the emphasis on applications.

Sophia Digital was one of the companies involved in providing the digital service to Finland. It has provided a uniform national EPG as well as a teletext service for individual channels. This is only a beginning. However, it is already looking forward to further implementations.

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Our July/August 2001 supplement was devoted to mobile DVB, and it included a discussion about space diversity antennas to improve mobile reception. Combining mobility and MHP was a large part of the Multimedia Car Platform (MCP) project, which has shown a prototype system in operation. This project has required a tremendous collaborative effort between many companies and the combination of many technologies. It is set to develop the core technology behind stunning new in-car services. In fact, the car could rival the home or office as an information center.

MHP is attractive because it is open. For the service provider, it means applications need to be written only once rather than as many times over as there are types of set-top boxes (STBs) out there. For the users, it means a free choice of STBs from any manufacturer, as long as it is MHP-compliant. Currently, the scope of the Finnish example is limited by the lack of MHP STBs. Many manufacturers are working together to provide these, and it is encouraging that ETSI is opening its test suite in June to check MHP compliance.

The story at the headend is different, with equipment already working and producing MHP data. MHP datacasting solutions are available from a number of sources, some described in our January edition (“Activating Interactive TV.”) Here, Digital Storage Media-Command and Control (DSM-CC) Object Carousel Server delivers MHP data into the transmission system. Checking applications work in real-world digital transmission and tuning the carousel operation to ensure quick action or interaction for customers are both important operational requirements. The emulation of interactive broadcasts sounds like the right answer as described here in “The task of emulating an interactive broadcast” on page 10.

Those who did make it to IBC last September may have noticed the avalanche of industry support for MHP. With this huge momentum, we can look forward to yet another TV revolution as the STB, IDTV and MPC introduce something really new to the medium — the real digital difference.

Bob Pank,

Supplement Editor

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