IMPALA, the International MHEG Promotion Alliance, has unveiled four new supporter members: Ensequence, TVonics, ALi Corporation and Zinwell. “IMPALA goes from strength-to-strength alongside the MHEG market it represents. These companies joining will of course help with the process of continuing to expand the market and increase knowledge about the technology’s real-world capabilities,” said Giri Valliappan, director of market development, IMPALA.
“MHEG-5 has proven itself as the most successful interactivity standard for digital TV with more than 20 million deployments in six years. It is easy to use and affordable thanks to the fact that it requires very little more system resources. MHEG-5 is also a scalable and flexible technology that is continuously being expanded in its capabilities. TVonics currently supplies Freeview set-top boxes and digital TV recorders and plans to supply a full range of Freesat products and IDTVs with MHEG-5 technology in 2008,” said Alp Somyurek, VP of sales and business development, Tvonics.
Originally developed and standardised by ISO in the mid-1990s as part of the DAVIC effort to support interactivity and navigation for video-on-demand services, MHEG-5 has achieved significant success on the UK’s Freeview DVB-T platform with over 23 million receivers (according to the Ofcom Digital Television Report, Q3 2007) deployed using UK Profile 1. The latest version is also an ETSI standard. It is now also deployed in New Zealand and has been specified by TVB in Hong Kong.
Roger Demuth, VP European business development, Ensequence commented: “MHEG-5 provides a true standardisation of technology across multiple geographies therefore simplifying the creation of dynamic interactive TV experiences with Ensequence software.”
Finally, May Wang, spokesperson for the ALi Corporation, concluded: “As a leading global STB chipset and solution provider – including MHEG-5-based products – it was a natural step for us to join IMPALA to assist in the further growth of the use of the technology.”
