1

Copyright 2013 Thomson Video Networks. All rights reserved. All other trade names referenced are service marks, trademarks, or registered trademarks
of their respective companies. Specifications subject to change without notice.
WHITE PAPER







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.


WHITE PAPER
2


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


WHITE PAPER
3

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.
WHITE PAPER
4

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 million
1
.

1
Source: Global Digital Forecast Workbook
WHITE PAPER
5

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).

WHITE PAPER
6


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
WHITE PAPER
7

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
WHITE PAPER
8

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.

WHITE PAPER
9

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.
WHITE PAPER
10
Copyright 2013 Thomson Video Networks. All rights reserved. All other trade names referenced are service marks, trademarks, or registered trademarks
of their respective companies. Specifications subject to change without 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


CONTACT INFORMATION
Please contact your sales representative or
visit our website for all contact details.
http://www.thomson-networks.com