NDS demos services with Tele Columbus, but sees low demand for HbbTV

NDS (Stand B16) will support HbbTV services but has seen relatively little in the way of requests, according to Yves Padrines, vice-president and general manager, EMEA at the interactive TV and content security technology provider.

Padrines told DTVE that NDS embraced open standards and would support HbbTV. However, he said that relatively few platform operator customers had made requests. “We will implement HbbTV only on the basis of customer requests and there really haven’t been many requests,” he said.

NDS and Tele Columbus announced last year that they had teamed up with Alcatel Lucent to develop new HbbTV offering, with the latter responsible for developing and hosting the service.

NDS did use ANGA Cable to showcase HbbTV-based interactive services from Red Bull Media House-owned ServusTV on Tele Columbus set-top boxes.

NDS showcased two examples of the integration of new IP-delivered services. The ServusTV branded applications include a streaming channel offering dedicated video content from Terra Mater, a documentary series. The second service demonstrated how content from an event like Red Bull Stratos could be grouped and offered to the audience with the click of one button.

Tele Columbus is currently testing an interactive TV portal to make supplementary content and services such as the ServusTV showcase available to subscribers. The service is delivered over broadband to Tele Columbus’ hybrid IP enabled HDTV set-top boxes.

Padrines said that the future development of HTML5 could have an impact on the development of services. HbbTV is based on a subset of the CE-HTML standard. NDS also used ANGA Cable to showcase the delivery of content to multiple screens using HTML5 and a Broadcom-based gateway device.