In the DVB-T pilot project in Graz, Siemens AG Österreich and Sony NetServices supported in particular the television stations ATVplus, Steiermark1, gotv, Sat.1 Österreich and ProSieben Austria in developing their MHP applications for !TV4GRAZ.
Together with ATVplus, Sony NetServices first developed a basic design for an MHP portal which included the definition and structure of the information to be offered as well as special features such as ordering and voting functions using the TV‘s remote control. The resulting menu items in the MHP portals as well as the navigation between main menus and sub-menus were then optimized in cooperation with Siemens in order to maximize intuitive, user-friendly operation for the user.
Sony Netservices‘ design concept
One of the main challenges in designing the user interface was the cost-cutting decision to design the portal so flexibly that its general structure could be used by all private television stations in the pilot tests and still be adapted to their respective corporate identities. Therefore, once the spaces for menu items, the miniature television screen and advertising banners were defined, it was necessary to ensure that design elements and colors which contained the individual station‘s colors and logos could be exchanged easily.
In this way, Siemens and Sony NetServices cooperated in the production of five MHP portals with different, unmistakable looks based on identical architecture.
Application development by Siemens
The viewers‘ navigation through the portals was enabled by the colored buttons and arrows on the remote control as well as defined shortcuts which allowed the direct selection of menu items or other options using the number buttons on the television remote. As another option to increase flexibility, the portal architecture also made it possible to open a different page (deeper in the menu hierarchy) instead of the start page when the viewer opens the portal. For example, this enabled viewers to access a voting page related to the show currently on the air without going through the respective menus.
Siemens handled the programming of the portals and their functions (including the return channel connection) on the basis of MHP Standard 1.0.2.
The MHP and DVB-T-compatible set-top boxes installed in the households did show some differences in terms of processing performance and operating systems. In order to ensure that the MHP portals could be displayed on screen by all of the boxes used without problems, Siemens set up a test laboratory which simulated the broadcasting cycle. This made it possible to test the portals developed on the basis of MHP Reference Version V1.0.2.
