HbbTV Announces New Steering Group Members - Sets Sights on Continuing to Build HbbTV Success on Global Basis

GENEVA, Switzerland, May 13, 2014 /CNW/ - The HbbTV Association, a global initiative dedicated to providing an open standard for the delivery of broadcast and broadband services through connected TVs and set-top boxes, today announced the results of its recent Steering Group elections.  As part of this, the new Steering Group re-elected Klaus Illgner as Chairman, Jon Piesing as Vice-Chairman and Mark Londero as Treasurer.  Over the upcoming two year term, the HbbTV Steering Group will be focused on further extending the consumer benefits of hybrid broadcast TV, ensuring continued capabilities to support new HbbTV services and promoting its wider adoption across the world.

"HbbTV has continued to grow rapidly over the last 12 months and the standard is now deployed on a global scale. We continue to see a very healthy interest across the world to adopt HbbTV services and build new applications" stated Klaus Ilgner, chair, HbbTV Association. "Our new Steering Group has the experience, vision and determination to take broadcast TV services to the next level. We look forward to continue our work with HbbTV members, other standards organizations, regulatory organizations and national TV bodies to help us continue bringing new interactive broadcast TV to consumers across the world."

HbbTV has gained strong market traction in Europe over the last several years and is now beginning to gain adoption internationally.  The new Steering Group aims to build on this success and focus on several key initiatives to advance the HbbTV standard including:

• Maintaining strong working relationships with other industry consortia such as DASH-Industry Forum, DVB, EBU, UPnP, W3C, ATSC, IPTV Forum Japan and DLNA to incorporate their capabilities into HbbTV specifications;
• Liaising with national TV bodies such as AEDETI, HD-Forum France, DTG UK, NorDig, Hybridcast, HbbTV Forum NL and other groups;
• Continuing to define and extend the capabilities of HbbTV to meet consumer needs including the HbTV 2.0 specification which will add new features including HTML5, HEVC and companion screen interaction;
• Continuing to operate the organization with focused sub-groups -  including testing, technical specifications, certification,  marketing - each with mandates to implement goals approved by the steering group
  
  

The newly elected Steering Group includes the following members:

• Andy Hickman, Digital TV Labs
• Bernard Fontaine, France Télévisions
• Frode Hernes, Opera Software
• Henry Rivero, RTL Group SA
• Jon Piesing, TP Vision
• John Adam, Samsung Electronics
• Klaus Illgner-Fehns, IRT 
• Mark Londero, Sony Europe 
• Nilo Mitra, Ericsson
• Nicolai Leymann, Deutsche Telekom 
• Peter MacAvock, EBU 
• Régis Saint Girons, httv 
• Rob Koenen, TNO 
• Steven Morris, Espial 
• Stuart Savage, LG Electronics
• Xavier Redon, Abertis Teleco
  
  

For further information about the HbbTV Association visit: https://www.hbbtv.org/

About HbbTV Association (www.hbbtv.org)

Hybrid Broadcast Broadband TV (or "HbbTV") is a major global initiative aimed at harmonising the broadcast and broadband delivery of entertainment services to the end consumer through connected TVs and set‐top boxes. The HbbTV specification was developed by industry leaders to effectively manage the rapidly increasing amount of available content targeted at today's end consumer. It is based on elements of existing specifications including OIPF (Open IPTV Forum), CEA, DVB, and W3C.

SOURCE ESPIAL GROUP