BBC Research and Development is to show its latest work on personalising broadcasts using the HbbTV standard.
BBC R&D is developing the idea of personalising a broadcast service by replacing elements of the content with IP-delivered content. The BBC says that while there is interest from commercial broadcasters and has driven work in industry groups such as DVB and HbbTV where it is known as dynamic ad substitution (DAS), its own interested is in non-commercial use cases, known as dynamic content substitution.
This covers the ability to personalise broadcast services to a particular taste, but also including content relevant to a local area.
Since last year the BBC has been working on improving the seamlessness of the experience.
“Our audience is accustomed to the highly polished presentation of our broadcast services, particularly our flagship channels, where every programme, trailer, sting or ident flows seamlessly from one to the next. Several seconds of a black screen are therefore not acceptable,” explained Lead R&D Engineer Matt Hammond.
In the UK, Freeview Play is working with pioneering the deployment of HbbTV 2 capable TVs. It currently plans to adopt the functionality needed to enable content substitution in TVs to support both commercial (DAS) and non-commercial uses.
BBC R&D is currently working with Freeview and with TV manufacturers and others in their development and testing work.
