OIPF and HbbTV consortium to extend collaboration

The Open IPTV Forum (OIPF), an industry organisation dedicated to creating a mass market for IPTV by defining and publishing free-of-charge, standards-based specifications for end-to-end IPTV services, and the Hybrid Broadcast Broadband TV (HbbTV) Consortium have announced a collaboration on the testing of technologies common to IPTV and enhanced broadcast environments. These include testing the Declarative Application Environment (OIPF browser) and the Media Formats specifications that are currently being implemented in retail connected TVs and set-top boxes in regions where hybrid services based on the HbbTV specification are deployed.

The results of this co-operation will be included in the first release of the OIPF Test Suite, which is expected to be available in the first quarter of 2013 and the second release of the HbbTV Test Suite expected in the second half of 2013.

Klaus Illgner-Fehns, chair of the HbbTV Consortium, said, “Test material is expensive to develop, and sharing the costs between the two organisations will result in more test material being created earlier than would be possible without the co-operation. Furthermore, reviewing test material is time consuming, and sharing this between the members of the two organisations will result in both organisations’ test suites also being available earlier”.