The HbbTV Association, a global initiative dedicated to providing an open standard for the delivery of broadcast and broadband services through connected TVs and set-top boxes, has today announced the release of test suite version 9.0 which will support the HbbTV 2 specification.
The new test suite expands on the existing suite, making it 50% larger with an additional 350 new tests covering HbbTV 2 functionality. It will also improve test coverage of the widely adopted HbbTV 1.1 and 1.5 standards. The release is an important step towards enhancing interoperability between HbbTV services and HbbTV devices.
HbbTV 2, which has so far been adopted by Italy and the UK, builds on the success of the previous version of HbbTV with additional new features that bring value to consumers, broadcasters, pay TV operators and OTT video providers alike. These include features such as seamless viewing of video content across TVs and mobile devices, standardised delivery of Ultra HD content with HEVC, improved accessibility of services and enhanced support for dynamic ad insertion.
Klaus Illgner, President of the HbbTV Association said: “We’re extremely pleased to reach a new milestone with the release of test suite version 9.0. It’s an important step towards enhancing interoperability of HbbTV products, enabling manufacturers and TV platforms to improve services and offer advanced interactive features to consumers”
The test suite has been made available through HbbTV Registered Test Centers. HbbTV members, who have the necessary expertise and equipment, may also license the test suite for use in their own facilities. The test suite is distributed with details on how to obtain a new test harness, which provides minimum required functionality to execute the approved test materials. Commercial test tools, which support the HbbTV test harness specification, are also available from different vendors.
The current version of HbbTV 2 is 2.0.1 (ETSI TS 102 796 1.4.1). This version adds features to 2.0 that were requested for the UK and the Italian markets, and addresses a small number of issues found during early implementation work on version 2.0. The HbbTV Association and ETSI have withdrawn version 2.0 (ETSI TS 102 796 1.3.1) from publication, completely replacing it with version 2.0.1.
The next release of the test suite will be version 9.1, due to be released before the end of 2016. It will include tests cases for the features that were added to address requirements from the UK and Italy, and will also expand the coverage for previous HbbTV versions.
