The Project
Between June and August 2004, the full technical cycle of interaction in digital television broadcast by terrestrial means was set up in Austria for the first time ever. The project was based on the DVB-T (Digital Video Broadcasting – Terrestrial) standard used to broadcast the television signal. Additional interactive services were programmed and broadcast on the basis of the European MHP (Multimedia Home Platform) operating system standard.
With a total budget of some € 9 million, the project was funded by the participating companies themselves as well as the Digitization Fund set up at RTR in early 2004. The pilot tests were also supported by the Styrian Business Promotion Agency. Although the test operation involved terrestrial broadcasting as the platform for the forward channel, this infrastructure accounted for less than 10% of expenses.
The majority of investments involved developing MHP-based interactive applications and creating a complete cycle of interaction in digital television. In this way, the experience gained in the Graz test project will benefit digitization on all broadcasting platforms (cable, satellite and terrestrial) for both broadcasting organizations and application developers, as well as promoting Austria as a media location.
Between June and August 2004, the full technical cycle of interaction in digital television broadcast by terrestrial means was set up in Austria for the first time ever. The project was based on the DVB-T (Digital Video Broadcasting – Terrestrial) standard used to broadcast the television signal. Additional interactive services were programmed and broadcast on the basis of the European MHP (Multimedia Home Platform) operating system standard.
With a total budget of some € 9 million, the project was funded by the participating companies themselves as well as the Digitization Fund set up at RTR in early 2004. The pilot tests were also supported by the Styrian Business Promotion Agency. Although the test operation involved terrestrial broadcasting as the platform for the forward channel, this infrastructure accounted for less than 10% of expenses.
The majority of investments involved developing MHP-based interactive applications and creating a complete cycle of interaction in digital television. In this way, the experience gained in the Graz test project will benefit digitization on all broadcasting platforms (cable, satellite and terrestrial) for both broadcasting organizations and application developers, as well as promoting Austria as a media location.
Austria and Telekom Austria AG, numerous other companies also participated in the project. Project management was handled by the Institute of Communication Networks and Satellite Communication at the Graz University of Technology / Joanneum Research.
150 test households in Graz were equipped for reception with set-top boxes manufactured by Humax, Nokia, Philips und Fujitsu Siemens and designed to support return channels as well as MHP-based applications. Use of the boxes as well as opinions on the additional interactive content offered were documented by Fessel-GfK, a market research organization, and the evolaris foundation in Graz.
Using a multiplexing process, ORF broadcast four digitized television channels using the bandwidth for one conventional channel: ORF 1, ORF 2 Steiermark, ATVplus and the interactive channel !TV4GRAZ, which was created specifically for the pilot tests. !TV4GRAZ‘s programming consisted of ORF shows and content from six private television broadcasters
(ATVplus, gotv, Pro Sieben Austria, Sat.1 Österreich,
Steiermark 1 and Atv Aichfeld).
