1 Copyright 2013 Thomson Video Networks. All rights reserved. All other trade names referenced are service marks, trademarks, o r registered trademarks

of their respective companies. Specifications subject to change w ithout notice.

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ENABLING HBBTV ON YOUR

DIGITAL TV NETWORK David Mouen, June 2013

Abstract: This paper provides an overview of the

Hybrid Broadcast Broadband TV (HbbTV) concept and

its applications, as well as an update on

standardization and deployment status. It then

describes the add-on to a digital TV headend (Satellite,

DTTV, Cable, IPTV) to enable delivery of innovative

HbbTV interactive non-linear and linear services.

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1. INTRODUCTION TO HBBTV ............................................................................................................................. 3

1.1 CONCEPT ................................................................................................................................................................ 3

1.2 ENABLING INTERACTIVE TV ........................................................................................................................................ 3

1.3 STANDARDIZATION ................................................................................................................................................... 4

1.4 DEPLOYMENT STATUS ............................................................................................................................................... 4

1.5 HOW DOES IT WORK? ............................................................................................................................................... 5

2. DIGITAL TV HEADEND FOR HBBTV .................................................................................................................. 6

2.1 HBBTV-CAPABLE HEADEND ARCHITECTURE .................................................................................................................. 6

2.2 BROADCAST HEADEND ASPECTS ................................................................................................................................. 6

2.3 BROADBAND HEADEND ASPECTS ................................................................................................................................ 7

3. THOMSON VIDEO NETWORKS IMPLEMENTATION ........................................................................................... 9

3.1 BUILDING BLOCKS .................................................................................................................................................... 9

3.2 KEY PRODUCT OVERVIEW .......................................................................................................................................... 9

4. CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................................................... 10

5. REFERENCES ................................................................................................................................................ 10

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1. INTRODUCTION TO HBBTV

1.1 Concept

The number of devices connected to the Internet and a TV (connected TV, STB, Blu-ray, game console, etc.) is

today estimated at a few hundred million and is expected to reach over 1 billion by 2015. The Internet has

given rise to tremendous competition with device vendors who are building their own offering delivered via

on-device portals, Pay-TV operators expanding their market with OTT, and pure OTT players such as Netflix,

Hulu, and YouTube.

HbbTV stands for Hybrid broadcast broadband TV and is an initiative by European broadcasters to turn this

threat into an opportunity for connected devices receiving broadcast TV content.

With this standard, broadcasters are able to signal and download interactive applications and content to the

broadcast path (satellite, terrestrial TV, Cable, and IPTV), trigger actions like popping up a portal to download a

proposal (red button) or voting button and manage access to additional non-linear content, linear content and

additional applications from the Internet. The integrity of the broadcast content is guaranteed, for example

there is no undesirable overlay. Switching from broadcast content to broadband content is seamlessly and

easily achieved using the remote control.

Pay-TV over HbbTV is possible and controlled by DRM solutions such as Marlin, PlayReady, Verimatrix and

others.

1.2 Enabling Interactive TV

A wide range of applications can be delivered over an HbbTV-capable DTTV

platform, starting with enhanced teletext and EPG, catch-up TV, and start-over.

More innovative applications taking advantage of broadcast and broadband

content control can be offered to the viewer such as match scores and

statisticson video overlay, voting, and interactive advertising. These all run on

any TV or STB regardless of the model or embedded OS providing it supports

the HbbTV standard.

By way of example, a TV channel in France recently launched a program with HbbTV interactivity offering the

catch-up of the last five shows including interactive content, voting and real-time access to results, live

question asking to the host and guests, and access

to guest biographies and the list of books

presented during the show.

From the Digital TV headend standpoint we have

defined two classes of applications: those with

minor headend involvement with carouselling and

injecting the HbbTV signaling and data in the

broadcast streams, and those with greater

involvement such as live and file video and audio

content transcoding, storing and streaming.

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1.3 Standardization

The HbbTV standard is based on existing

standards and web technologies from

different organizations including OIPF

(Open IPTV Forum), CEA for CE-HTML,

DVB, W3C and ISO/IEC.

V1.0. The first HbbTV deployments are

based on V1.0, a specification which was

approved as ETSI TS 102 796 1.1.1 in June

2010, supporting a wide range of

broadcast and broadband applications.

V1.5. The three main enhancements of

this release (ETSI TS 102 796 1.2.1 –

11/12) are:

Access to pay-TV services with multiple DRM support using Common Encryption

MPEG-DASH adaptive streaming standard to dynamically optimize the picture quality/bandwidth

trade-off, extending to linear content delivery (thematic and event channels, etc.)

Access to the DVB EIT schedule table from the HbbTV application to build an enhanced 7-day

Electronic Program Guide.

V2.0. This release is scheduled for 2014 and expected to feature enhancements including the support of

HTML5 and HEVC to reduce transmission costs, and close synchronization between broadcast and broadband

content on one or multiple screens.

1.4 Deployment Status

Deployment, Adoption

In Europe HbbTV services are offered in Spain, France, Switzerland, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, and the

Czech Republic. HbbTV services are deployed across satellite, terrestrial and cable platforms. HbbTV has been

adopted by the Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden) and Ireland and is part of

the NorDig digital TV receiver specification.

Several other countries are considering this standard. It has been announced in Turkey (Digiturk) and Russia. In

APAC, Malaysia has announced adoption of HbbTV, while Singapore, Vietnam, Indonesia, Myanmar, China,

Japan, Thailand and Australia are in the evaluation process. USA and Argentina are also considering HbbTV.

Existing HbbTV deployments are based on the V1.0 release. Deployment of the V1.5 release will start shortly

with the market availability of HbbTV V1.5-capable TV sets and STBs.

TV sets and STBs

Over fourty brands have delivered HbbTV TV sets and STBs in Europe over the last twelve to eighteen months,

including Kaonmedia, LG, Loewe, Philips, Samsung, Sharp and Sony. Most TV sets sold in Western Europe are

HbbTV-capable. It is estimated that by 2014 the number will be 30 million1.

1 Source: Global Digital Forecast Workbook

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1.5 How Does It Work?

The hybrid device (TV set or STB) is simultaneously connected to the broadcast network and the Internet. In

systems where Internet connection is not available, applications like EPG, super teletext and news are still

possible.

From the broadcast network the hybrid device receives linear content plus the HbbTV signaling tables (AIT -

Application Information Table), interactive applications (DSM-CC object carousels) and triggers (stream events)

to activate actions like popping up the voting application or making interactive advertising available at a given

time.

When connected to the Internet the hybrid device can download non-linear content (e.g. catch-up TV), receive

linear content (TV, radio), and get additional applications and data (news) from web servers. The return

channel allows the device to interact with applications hosted over the Internet to request content or

applications or send user-generated content (social TV).

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2. DIGITAL TV HEADEND FOR HBBTV

2.1 HbbTV-Capable Headend Architecture

Our focus in this section is on the headend architecture and the role of each functional block required to

support HbbTV content.

2.2 Broadcast Headend Aspects

Compression and Multiplexing

These functional blocks achieve the traditional processing of a digital TV headend: video and audio

compression with maximum efficiency to deliver high picture quality, broadcast data injection (teletext, DVB

subtitles, electronic program guide, etc.), pay-TV content scrambling and multiplex delivery to the broadcast

network.

HbbTV Carousel Server

The HbbTV carousel server injects interactive applications into traditional broadcast networks to offer

extended services to viewers. It acts as a gateway between the online experience and a traditional broadcast

headend. In some cases the carousel is co-located with the interactive application servers, but having it located

in the headend allows the resource to be shared among multiple broadcasters.

The carousel server streams dedicated PIDs such as AIT tables, DSM-CC object carousels and stream events

that can be controlled by the interactive applications via APIs. DVB streams delivered over ASI or IP by the

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carousel server are injected in the DVB multiplexer which combines them with the relevant compressed

services received from the compression system as data components.

The aim of stream events is to synchronize online applications with the broadcast video content. Stream events

can be either immediate (do-it-now events), or synchronized with the video content by referring to the Normal

Play Time (NPT). Normal Play Time (also called DSM-CC timecode) is a more general time indication for a

stream.

The HbbTV carousel server is interfaced with the interactive application via FTP to upload files and APIs for

control purposes (e.g. create, allocate, start, stop carousels and stream events).

Bandwidth Impact on Broadcast

Deploying HbbTV means dedicating bandwidth to

these new services, 100 to 300 kbps to carousel an

application portal. The HbbTV components use

from 5 to 15% of the total service bandwidth. This

is in addition to the traditional components of any

service (video, audio, audio descriptor, teletext,

EPG, etc.), which implies additional pressure on the

video compression engines.

There are, however, markets where broadband coverage is not available and it may be preferable to broadcast

more data through this HbbTV stream, e.g. full EPG or Teletext. In these cases the required bandwidth will be

higher and can even reach 2-3Mbit/s per multiplex, for instance.

Given the high cost of broadcasting 1 Mbps (over €1 M/year on terrestrial platforms in some countries) and

given the continuous encoder performance enhancements, it makes sense to upgrade the compression system

to maintain picture quality level while reducing the bandwidth dedicated to the video.

2.3 Broadband Headend Aspects

Bandwidth Impact on Broadband

Compression efficiency is key. The compression codec specified by the HbbTV standard is MPEG-4 AVC.

Premium video compression is key in Web TV applications for three reasons.

The first is to deliver a high-quality viewing experience over increasingly large TV sets to capture the

audience and make the advertising more attractive.

The second is to reduce CDN transport costs which are charged per gigabyte transported. Maintaining

constant picture quality and reducing bitrate by 20% directly results in a 20% lower CDN OPEX.

The final reason is to increase the eligibility of ADSL subscribers to HD premium services yielding more

revenues.

Migration to HEVC. The first version of the HEVC standard was released in early 2013. The goal of HEVC is to

provide the same subjective picture quality at half the bitrate of the H.264/AVC codec. The impact of HEVC on

HbbTV broadband will be huge: halving CDN costs and significantly increasing ADSL subscribers’ eligibility to HD

services. Improving HEVC encoder performance to reach that target compared to the best MPEG-4 AVC

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encoder will be achieved in stages, but the gains are so great that this is one of the features planned for HbbTV

release V2.0.

Linear Content on Internet

Live encoding / Transcoding. The aim of this functional block is to compress linear video and audio content

from baseband or compressed inputs. It supports Adaptive Bit Rate (ABR), i.e. multiple bitrates, multiple

resolutions from low resolution up to high definition, multiple encoding profiles, and multiple frame rates. It

can perform complementary processing such as logo insertion, mosaic generation, and DVB subtitle burning

into the video stream. It supports MPEG-4 AVC and should be ready for a software upgrade to HbbTV V2.0

(HEVC).

The next stage is the packetizer/scrambler functional block. The pay-TV content is encrypted just once even if

multiple DRM servers are used thanks to the Common Encryption Scheme (CENC). The scrambler uses AES 128-

bit in CTR mode for encryption. Pay-TV and free-to-air content is then streamed by the origin server using

MPEG-DASH and injected into the Content Delivery Network (CDN).

Delivering Broadband Non-linear Content (catch-up, start-over, VOD, nPVR)

For VOD and nPVR applications the content has to be adapted in terms of file format and codec. This is

performed by the file transcoding block which delivers a single resolution MP4 for HbbTV V1.0 platforms and

multi-screen, multi-resolution MPEG-4 file format for MPEG-Dash for HbbTV 1.5 platforms.

For Catch-Up TV and Start-Over the linear content (broadcast and broadband) is encoded by the Live

Transcoding/Encoding block in the same formats as for VOD then recorded in the storage block.

After scrambling for Pay-TV the origin server delivers all non-linear content to the CDN on first device request.

Content Management System (CMS)

This block lies outside the headend. It manages the video platform users, content and resources and through

dedicated APIs triggers the start and end time of events (catch-up, start-over) and updates URLs on the HbbTV

Portal.

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3. THOMSON VIDEO NETWORKS IMPLEMENTATION

3.1 Building Blocks

3.2 Key Product Overview

CS100 HbbTV Carousel Server. Allowing the building and supervision of high-quality, value-added television

services via real-time data processing. The data can be received from multiple sources. All carousels are

generated in real time, and both the carousel content and AIT application signaling can be updated

dynamically. The CS100 is a product from our partner ICAREUS.

ViBE EM4000 / EM2000. Offering a significant increase in compression efficiency, the ViBE EM4000 multi-

channel SD/HD encoder and the ViBE EM2000 multi-channel SD encoder achieve their performance through

improved motion estimation and enriched encoding logic. With their market-leading SD and HD performance,

the ViBE encoders allow users to add HbbTV data to a transponder without reducing picture quality.

NetProcessor. Performing multiplexing, scrambling, and data injection (HbbTV, EPG, etc.), the NetProcessor is

also the arbiter of the statistical multiplexing engine, paving the way for efficient HbbTV bursty data injection.

ViBE VS7000. Supporting multi-screen, multi-codec, multi-format applications, the ViBE VS7000 Video System

is the next-generation compression platform in an all-IP environment, from broadcast-quality live encoding to

faster-than-real-time file transcoding. The ViBE VS7000 supports multiple codecs including MPEG-4 AVC and

HEVC.

The ViBE VS7000 interoperates with an external packager / scrambler / origin server. It can also host packager

and scrambler features.

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10 Copyright 2013 Thomson Video Networks. All rights reserved. All other trade names referenced are service marks, trademarks, o r registered trademarks

of their respective companies. Specifications subject to change w ithout notice.

Featuring superior picture quality to provide a best-in-class customer video experience, the ViBE VS7000 comes

on highly resilient platforms with uniquely integrated operation, through a unified graphical user interface

allowing custom workflow creation, automatic load-balancing and fail-over features. Simplicity, reliability, and

scalability are core benefits of the ViBE VS7000

ViaMotion software suite. Implementing storage, packager, scrambler and origin server features for linear and

non-linear services, ViaMotion is a product from our partner ANEVIA.

XMS Management System. Administering and monitoring all headend devices via a suite of applications and

GUI for controlling the hardware and operational parameters. With redundancy at all system stages, XMS™

features a unique design to deliver fault-tolerant system architecture. From 1+1 up to N+P the proposed

architectures in hybrid ASI / IP infrastructures target 100% service availability.

4. CONCLUSION

New opportunities with HbbTV

By adding just three building blocks (HbbTV carousel, multi-screen multi-resolution encoder, VOD/catch-

up/start-over server) to the digital TV headend it is possible to benefit from the new HbbTV standard to turn

the threat of the connected TV wave into the opportunity of delivering a wide range of innovative interactive

services.

From HbbTV to OTT

The infrastructure described in this paper for the HbbTV application is fully ready to address larger OTT

applications. It is easy to address non-HbbTV devices such as tablets, smart phones, and game consoles via

activation of complementary software licenses for Adobe Flash / RTMP, Apple HTTP Live streaming, Microsoft

smooth streaming, MPEG-Dash Support, MPEG-2 TS, and MP4.

5. REFERENCES

ETSI TS 102 796 V1.2.1 (2012-11): Technical Specification - Hybrid Broadcast Broadband TV

HbbTV 1.5 from www.hbbtv.org

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