December 21, 2017

HbbTV Symposium 2017 – Full Round-Up

As you will be aware, the 6^th Annual HbbTV Symposium was held in Rome in October and what a fantastic success it was! We tried to make the sessions as varied as possible to ensure that every aspect of HbbTV technology was covered, whilst maintaining the theme ‘HbbTV: Technical Excellence, Commercial Advantage’. We had many interesting and relevant presentations and speakers and overall feedback suggests that all were well received. Additionally, we held the first ever HbbTV Awards and had so many excellent entries, it was difficult for our judges to choose the winners across the categories.

Over the next 6 months, we will be re-visiting each of the symposium themes and award categories to share with you the insight gained from them. We will be presenting some of the winning entries in more detail, we will also cover some of the runners up, as we feel that many also deserved recognition.

Here is a list of all our winners:

Best Use of HbbTV for Advertising and Promotion: R2B2 sro, Automated Yield Management. This entry was considered by the judging panel to be ‘very innovative’ and ‘an interesting business model’.

Best use of HbbTV for Broadcast Enhancement: rbb, Band Camp Berlin. Judges considered this entry ‘original’, a ‘nice idea’ and ‘very comprehensive’.

Best Multiscreen HbbTV Service: Vewd, Vewd Core enhanced with HbbTV 2.0.1 media synchronisation and companion screen support. Judges noted that this entry offered ‘good HbbTV 2 companion screen feature demonstration’.

Best Use of HbbTV for Content Discovery: Digital UK, Freeview Explore. The judges believed that this entry offered ‘seamless integration’.

Best Marketing or Promotion of an HbbTV Based Service: Freeview Australia, Freeview Plus. This was deemed ‘funny’ and ‘innovative’ by judges.

Best Technology Innovation in an HbbTV Product or Service: Media Broadcast, Dash Direct Play. Judges commented that this entry was ‘impressive’ and offered ‘a good technical solution’.

Best Sympoisum Presention: Paul Gray, IHS Markit: Television Sets: Evolution, Power Shifts and Outlook, voted for by the Symposium attendees.

The Judges Grand Prix Prize was awarded to Tivù for ‘a collection of shortlisted entries using many of the HbbTV latest features’.

HbbTV Association Members from around the world awarded the Best Individual Contribution to the HbbTV Association to Thi Thanh Van Nguyen, Samsung R&D Institute in recognition of her work in the HbbTV Testing Group.

In case you missed the Symposium or would like to re-visit any of the presentations, you can download them all by following this link.

We would like to thank our sponsors for their contribution to the success of the event and all the participants for the continued support! We hope to see you all at next year’s event in Berlin!