HbbTV 2 – IRT Lab

Dialog+ – End user tests

Michael Meier — Mon, 21 Dec 2020 10:11:02 +0000

The improvement of speech intelligibility for broadcasting content has been an important aspect of IRT’s work for many years. Dialog+ is the name of an additional service with enhanced speech intelligibility that promises to at least improve the current situation. To ensure that these developments are not only valid in a lab context, but also ...

HbbTV 2: Down with the language barriers

Klaus Merkel — Wed, 17 Jun 2020 06:24:51 +0000

On television, language barriers are reconciled by translations or subtitles. Thanks to artificial intelligence, audio tracks can now even be converted into foreign languages largely automatically and with much less effort. New features co-developed by IRT make it possible to offer viewers individual language versions via the TV speakers or via smartphones and headphones. A ...

Audio Description via bone conduction headphones using HbbTV2

Maike Richter — Wed, 29 Apr 2020 06:23:37 +0000

People with visual impairments often need audio description when watching TV in order to understand what is happening visually. This can be problematic in certain group settings, where it is not possible to enable audio description e.g. public viewing events. In a group setting, as of now, everybody listens to the same broadcast sound together ...

Speech intelligibility: Dialog+ via HbbTV 2

Maike Richter — Fri, 03 Apr 2020 09:45:09 +0000

Over the past several years the number of complaints from TV viewers about hard to understand dialogue in various programs has been increasing. Many viewers are not always able to follow the dialogue of a TV program without effort even though they have adjusted the volume. Reasons for this can be age-related hearing impairments, modern ...

IRT’s Universal Launcher

Christoph Ziegler — Wed, 04 Sep 2019 15:47:55 +0000

IRT has developed a concept which allows HbbTV apps of different broadcasters to push links to websites or mobile apps to companion screens. These may provide additional information on a show, which viewers can retrieve during or after. A prototype app called Universal Launcher was developed by IRT to showcase the posibilities. Communication between the HbbTV ...

“Inter-Device Synchronization” using HbbTV2

Klaus Merkel — Wed, 15 May 2019 09:24:28 +0000

The “inter-device synchronization” feature of the HbbTV2 standard allows the playback of IP AV streams on a mobile device in lip-sync with the broadcast TV image on the TV. One of the most important use cases for this is the provision of additional audio versions via mobiles and headphones, e.g. for use in a family ...

The Tinkered TV Companion

Christoph Ziegler — Thu, 06 Sep 2018 13:54:06 +0000

What we’ve done We have built a companion-screen application for the children’s quiz programme “1, 2 oder 3“. The app allows children at home to play along, just like the children in the show, using a floor pad. The floor pad uses a Raspberry PI single-board computer to connect to an HbbTV application on the ...

2-IMMERSE MotoGP multiscreen experience with HbbTV 2 retail devices

Christoph Ziegler — Thu, 16 Aug 2018 06:58:16 +0000

Partners in the EU-funded project 2-IMMERSE have developed a platform for multiscreen services. The architecture of the 2-IMMERSE platform has been built around the HbbTV 2 specification, mainly using the new companion-screen protocols for app-to-app communication and inter-device media synchronisation. At the beginning of the project there were no TV sets implementing the HbbTV-2 standard available. ...

HbbTV Application Discovery over Broadband

Thomas Schierbaum — Mon, 28 May 2018 11:27:01 +0000

Hybrid broadcast broadband TV (HbbTV) is a global initiative aimed at harmonising the broadcast and broadband delivery of entertainment services to consumers through connected TVs, set-top boxes and multiscreen devices. The new HbbTV feature Application Discovery (ADB) over Broadband has been desgined to expand HbbTV usage to additional market segments. The key usage mode ...

Synchronised Holograms

Christoph Ziegler — Fri, 11 Aug 2017 12:01:00 +0000

Synchronising an augmented-reality experience to a broadcast programme on an HbbTV 2 device Version 2 of the HbbTV standard, introduces several new features. Probably the most interesting set of features target at combining mobile devices such as tablets or smartphones with HbbTV devices. These so-called companion-screen features allow creating distributed media experiences, in the sense ...