OpenTV and Matsushita Joint Venture Helps Standardize Interactive Services

by Alan Sheckter, Smart TV & Sound news editor

OpenTV and Matsushita have recently completed joint development of a Multimedia Home Platform (MHP) extension for digital interactive TV.

The MHP standard, defined by the Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB) project group, is a common application-programming interface (API) for
delivering multimedia services such as enhanced TV services, games and home banking. The MHP standard enables digital interactive content and services to be developed for all MHP-compliant television set-top boxes, integrated TVs and even multimedia PCs.

Before this MHP standard, these applications may have needed some
adjusting when using technology from different broadcast
networks or set-top box manufacturers.

The product is expected to be immediately available for certification as soon as the DVB releases its anticipated MHP Test Suite later this year.

OpenTV is among the world’s top interactive television companies,
and Matsushita, best known outside Japan by its Panasonic brand name, has a dominating world presence in consumer electronics.

OpenTV expects that the MHP extension will enable content and service to be delivered to more iTV viewers, which will trigger greater investment and innovation from application developers. MHP is
particularly important, OpenTV said, in accelerating the expansion of the iTV industry in the European and Asian markets.

Network operators that already deploy interactive television using
OpenTV can continue using existing set-top boxes and/or deploy
set-top boxes running OpenTV and its new MHP compliant extension.