Nilo Mitra, president Open IPTV Forum (OPIF), made a strong case for standardisation.
“Mobile industry perhaps strongest example of how standards have grown everyone’s business and the consumer also benefits from open standards-based solutions.”
There is a need for a common application environment. Services and apps can be developed once but deployed to any device that implements this horizontal platform.
OIPF DAE (Declarative Application Environment) single platform is to serve all three markets, OTT, HbbTV, IPTV with the presentation using html5 and CSS and the service in JavaScript APIs.
“Single platforms are serving three models, the boundary between these delivery methods are blurring. So don’t let technology choices recreate such boundaries. It should built in to all connected TVs for HbbTV and OTT. We need to build on this base for management IPTV networks.”
The OIPF proposes a new feature package for STB-less IPTV. “The selection is based on acknowledged support in the browsers most commonly deployed on TVs. The TV supports multicast, OSDT and HLS/DASG, the CAM supports decryption and all operator specific aspects (identity, service list, TR069,…) and the portal will be operator specific.
“This is the foundation for the mass market success of connected TVs and apps. It is also essential for the OTT HbbTV and IPTV markets to develop to their full potential and provides a platform for more viable innovation. It also enables freedom of choice for players at all poitns in the ecosystem including, most importantly, the consumer.”