Book coming soon!

'Interactive TV standards', by Steve Morris and Anthony Smith-Chaigneau, is currently in the process of publication and will be available soon.

Featuring all the material on the website
Much more discussion of the technical and commercial issues
Covers MHP, OCAP and JavaTV
Discusses practical issues of building and deploying systems
Written by people who have developed the standards, built middleware and apps, and promoted MHP since the very beginning.

Coming soon from Focal Press.

Home > Resources

MHP Links

This is not intended to be a complete list of all MHP information out there on the Web, but it should give you a good starting point. Basically, stuff gets added as and when I find it. If you want the latest MHP news, check out the official MHP web site. For more MHP links, check out Juha Laakso's excellent page of MHP links

The Interactive TV Web is not responsible for the accuracy or content of any external links that are listed on this page.

A list of the events at which the DVB project will be taking part, and where MHP-related products and events may be taking place, can be found at the official DVB web site.

Specifications

The MHP specification
Globally Executable MHP (GEM)
- Version 1.0
OpenCable Application Platform (OCAP)
ATSC Digital TV Application Software Environment (DASE)
ATSC Advanced Common Application Platform (ACAP)
- ACAP Candidate Standard
- ATSC Interaction Channel Protocol - Candidate Standard
Sun JSR 242 ('On Ramp To OCAP')
- JSR 242 Home page
- 'On Ramp To OCAP' Javadoc, version 0.7.2
NorDig
DGTVI
- DGTVI D-Book ver. 1.1
DAVIC
- DAVIC 1.4 part 9
The HAVI Level 2 UI
- Full specification (PDF)
- API Javadoc (Zip)
Java and related specifications from Sun
Other useful specifications
- Bitstream's PFR font format
- The Tiresias font (the standard MHP font)
- DVB specifications for download from ETSI
- ATSC standards for US digital TV systems
- SCTE/ATSC standards

Organisations

DVB
The official MHP web site
DVB Services - the MHP Root Certificate Authority
DAVIC
The European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) - publishers of the MHP and related specifications
HAVi
NorDig (Scandinavian DTV standards body)
The German MarComm Group
DGTVI, The Italian DTV organisation
The official DTT site of the regional government of Catalunya
More technical news from the regional government of Catalunya
Digitag (Digital terrestrial TV action group)
DGTVi (The Italian digital TV group)
NIST DASE home page
CableLabs (home of OpenCable and OCAP)
ATSC
The Society Of Cable Telecommunication Engineers - responsible for some US standards for digital cable TV
Sun's Java site

Tools

XleTView - an open source MHP implementation (partial support only)
OpenMHP - an open source MHP implementation (partial support only)
MHP4Free - free MHP implementation from Convergence (all docs in German)
The reference implementation of JavaTV - from Sun Microsystems (warning - this is not fully MHP compatible, but since the source is distributed it's a useful reference)
GoOnie - an open source DVB-HTML browser
CreaTV - an open source object carousel generator
A partial MHP implementation - from devicetop.com
MHP4Win - a Windows MHP implementation from Osmosys

Broadcast Signing Engine - an open source tool for generating MHP security files
MHPTester, a tool for testing the features of MHP implementations - Open source, from RTT
DVBSnoop - an open source tool for analysing DVB transport streams
DVBCC - an open-source class library for generating object carousels
mhpspec - a subset of the MHP Security File Generator from Unisoft

A trial version of Gear - from Snap2
A trial version of AltiComposer - from Alticast
A trial version of Cardinal Studio - from Cardinal Information Systems (alternative link)
A demo version of Sublime iTV Suite - from Sublime Software
A demo version of ModelStream - from Emuse Technologies (requires OpenTV SDK)
JAME - from Fraunhofer IMK (currently in beta test)

Doc2Java, a tool for converting JavaDoc files into Java skeleton source code - Freeware, written by Immo Benjes.

Discussion forums

Books

Apart from our own book, which is coming soon, there are a couple of other books that discuss open standards for iTV moiddleware.

Introduction to MHP (Christophe Declerck) - Coming soon
ITV Handbook: Technologies and Standards (Edward M. Schwalb)
Interactive TV Technology & Markets (H.O. Srivastava)
Multimedia and Interactive Digital TV: Managing the Opportunities Created by Digital Convergence (Margherita Pagani)
Digital Television: MPEG-1, MPEG-2 and Principles of the DVB System (Herve Benoit)
The Essential Guide to digital set-top boxes and interactive TV (Gerard O'Driscoll)
Digital Interactive TV and Metadata (Artur Lugmayr, Samuli Niiranen, Seppo Kalli) - the homepage for this book

News services

Advanced-television.com
Broadcast Engineering
broadcastpapers.com
Cable & Satellite International
digitaltelevision.com
BroadbandBananas
DigiTV.de (German)
DigiTV.fi
itv-content (German)
iTV Marketer
informitiv
Media Visions journal - interactive TV reports
TVDI - Spanish iTV portal
MHP.org news & events
Screen Digest

Technical tutorials

Using and securing the return channel - A Sony tutorial on using the return channel
A basic introduction to Java and Xlets - From Espial.
The JMF 1.0 programmer's guide - From Sun Microsystems
MHP for application developers - BOF at JavaOne 2002
JavaTV API technical overview - Session at JavaOne 2002
Developing DVB-Java applications - A semi-technical presentation on DVB-J applications from Philips
MHPDev.net
An introduction to MHP 1.0 and MHP 1.1 - White paper from BBC R&D written by someone involved in the standardisation process
The DVB MHP Internet Access profile - White paper from BBC R&D written by someone who helped standardise it (also a paper given at IBC 2001)
A presentation on DVB-HTML - From Thomson
An article on DVB-HTML - From Canal+
Guidelines for developing DVH-HTML content - From Ortikon Interactive (free registration required)
MHP session from JavaOne, 2001 - a good introduction to MHP
Java In The Living Room? - A semi-technical MHP presentation from Philips

A more general digital TV tutorial (Spanish)

General Overviews

An excellent and thorough overview of MHP in Europe - from the MHP knowledge base
MHP session from JavaOne, 2001 - a good introduction to MHP
MHP Presentation from Philips - Powerpoint format
An overview of MHP
A dissertation on MHP and authoring tools (German)
The Multimedia Home Platform: Creating a Multimedia World in the STB - A general overview of an MHP system
Wikipedia's (relatively poor) entry for MHP
MHP: The need for a standard - white paper from WIPRO (free registration needed to view). A high-level overview, but may be useful
MHP demo videos from BroadbandBananas - examples of MHP applications
Article from Sharp on MHP migration
A paper from Micronas - presented at the International IC conference in China (free registration required)
High-level introduction to MHP - written for FACS. My comments on this article are also available.
MHP lecture from Weimar University - German (Translation of this page from Google)
A discussion of set-top boxes and MHP from the Technical University of Braunschweig - German, PDF format
A basic overview of MHP at domotica.net - Spanish (Translation of this article from Google)
Basis paper for the entry of MHP into the German free TV market - PDF format,German
An article on the MHP reference implementation from IRT - German, PDF format
An early white paper on MHP - from the chairman of the DVB commercial module PDF format
Some information gathered at CeBit 2001 - German page, but MHP information is in English