Background

Work on the DVB-MHP standard began in 1997. Very soon, it became clear that, technologically, the new standard could not be based on any of the proprietary APIs as they existed in the market by then. Subsequently, and with farsightedness, the decision was made to use Java technology as a basis for new common APIs. A first ETSI version of the standard (DVB-MHP 1.0) became available in July 2000. Already in August 1999, a public "over-the-air" demonstration of MHP applications and MHP decoders took place at the Internationale Funkausstellung IFA (International Broadcasting Exhibition) in Berlin. In these early days of MHP development, a process of testing applications versus implementations with the goal of debugging both and thus gaining a higher level of technical interoperability between the contributions of the different partners took place. It also needs to be stated that the first version of the MHP standard had a number of shortcomings. For example, technical aspects had not been covered precisely enough. Consequently, the next version of the standard (MHP 1.01) was created. It was published by ETSI in October 2001 and was published by the Commission as European Standard on 31st December 2002 (OJ 2002/C 331/04). In June 2002, MHP 1.02 was introduced. This, in turn, was followed by MHP version 1.03. While the work outlined above primarily improved the basic profile of the standard, a new profile with additional features like HTML, extended back-channel usability or smart card API was published by ETSI (MHP 1.1). The whole development process until now (April 2003) has shown that a high-level MHP API is a solid basis for many interesting applications which have been demonstrated to date. However, the complexity that comes with it demands highly skilled application development. Meanwhile, first services have gone on air in the Nordic countries and in Germany. End user equipment is also available on the market, but the uptake is rather slow, primarily due to the lack of compelling offerings.