Advanced Television

Keepixo readies its products for HbbTV 2.0

March 2, 2016

Keepixo, a provider of software-based head-end solutions for IPTV and OTT, has upgraded its Genova Software Suite to support the latest additions to the HbbTV 2.0 specifications.

HbbTV is a global initiative targeted at bridging broadcast and broadband delivery of content and services to allow consumption of content on connected TVs, set-top boxes and mobile devices. The latest HbbTV 2.0 version, which was published in February 2015, adds major new features including:

  • Addition of HEVC as a video codec to support Ultra-HD as well as HD
  • Extra MPEG-DASH profiles as defined by DVB to make deployment of MPEG-DASH services easier
  • Addition of subtitles for broadband delivered content using EBU profile of W3C TTML (a.k.a. EBU-TT-D)

Keepixo has been actively working to upgrade its products to comply with the new additions of HbbTV 2.0. Keepixo’s solutions are ideally suitable to implement the HbbTV 2.0 broadband delivery workflow.

Furthermore, HbbTV 2.0 introduces the possibility to add subtitles for broadband delivered content as per EBU-TT-D specification. Keepixo has joined force with other leading technology and content providers to make test streams available with EBU-TT-D subtitles. The content for the test streams is provided by German broadcasters Bayerischer Rundfunk (BR) and Das Erste. The Keepixo encoder translates the original Teletext subtitles to EBU-TT-D compliant subtitles, transcodes the video into 6 profiles and packages it into MPEG-DASH. The streams are then pushed to Akamai CDN for delivery. The Institut für Rundfunktechnik (IRT) checked the conformance of the streams against the EBU-TT-D standard and coordinated the efforts.

Jerome Blanc, Keepixo COO, commented, “This coordinated effort represents a reference implementation of an end-to-end delivery of MPEG-DASH content with EBU-TT-D subtitles which will help the industry with migration towards HbbTV 2.0”.

Categories: HbbTV, Press Releases