2014 is likely to be remembered as the year HbbTV really took off in Central and Eastern Europe.
Indeed, much has happened in the three months since I last reviewed the rollout of services in the region in this column.
Take Poland, which seems to be very much at the forefront of developments. Only earlier this week, the public broadcaster TVP announced what it termed a “pioneering venture”, namely TVP Bieszczady, a virtual channel and tourist app that will be available on its hybrid platform from July 21 until at least the end of September.
Alongside it will come a special TV channel, on air for only two days later this month, broadcast on TVP Stream and available on the web and mobile devices.
TVP began its activities in HbbTV just prior to Euro 2012 and has since launched apps for other important sporting events, including the London Olympic Games, Sochi Winter Olympics and most recently the World Cup in Brazil.
However, it has also focused on other genres and is by no means the only player in the Polish HbbTV sector, with others including the commercial TV channels Eska TV, Polo TV and Vox Music TV.
In the neighbouring Czech Republic, the public broadcaster CT, like TVP very much a regional pioneer in HbbTV, also launched an app for the World Cup, available specifically on its thematic channel CT sport. This came not long after it launched an app for the Ice Hockey World Championships in Minsk, Belarus, as well as two apps (iVysilani:D and AbeceDecko) giving access to children’s programming.
Meanwhile the music broadcaster Ocko, which is also active in HbbTV in the Czech Republic, is expected to launch another app sometime this month.
In Slovakia, the public broadcaster RTVS launched is first HbbTV app, again specifically the World Cup, in June.
There have also been interesting developments in Hungary, where only this week the national transmission company Antenna Hungária published some interesting figures about HbbTV.
Perhaps the most revealing was that there are now nearly 200,000 Hbb-enabled smart TVs in the country and that almost 10% have already been used to receive HbbTV services. In Hungary, as elsewhere in the region, HbbTV appears to have been boosted by the World Cup.
Although developments in HbbTV are undoubtedly also taking place in other CEE markets, the most active are currently Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary. It remains to be seen what happens in Russia, the region’s largest, where efforts to introduce HbbTV appear to have stalled.
