Hybrid TV services have been launched in Estonia by Levira and the country’s leading broadcasters.
They are being offered free of charge to viewers through the digital terrestrial platform TasutaTV, which is available throughout the whole country, and, according to Mart Einpalu, the chairman of the board at Levira, do not compete directly with cable or satellite TV.
The HbbTV platform offers EPG and catch-up TV features for the major Estonian FTA channels. From a dedicated channel viewers can find a TasutaTV interactive portal channel to access all the regular TV channel services and additional OTT applications such as news, weather and radio streams over IP as well as additional extra TV channels streams.
Einpalu added that TasutaTV is well suited to homes that cannot receive cable or do not to watch hundreds of TV channels.
It will also appeal as an additional service to homes with more than one TV.
The broadcasters signed up to the service are publicly owned ETV, national commercial stations Kanal 2 and TV3 and the regional Tallinn TV.
The Levira hybrid TV solution was built and launched with Sofia Backstage HbbTV platform. Technical solution supports latest technologies with HbbTV 1.5 though most of the services can also run with most of the existing HbbTV 1.0 receivers.
