Grammy Award winner Albhy Galuten spearheads HbbTV Symposium 2018

Geneva, October 9, 2018 – The HbbTV Association and Deutsche TV-Plattform are proud to announce that US record producer, composer and technology expert Albhy Galuten, winner of two Grammy Awards, will present the keynote at this year’s HbbTV Symposium and Awards. The event will take place in Berlin on November 14-15, 2018 under the overall theme “Growing Value through HbbTV”.

Galuten, who produced 13 number one hits in the US Billboard charts featuring artists such as the Bee Gees, Eric Clapton, Jellyfish and Barbra Streisand, will talk about HbbTV services and media landscape evolution. Galuten will focus on the supply of premium content including interoperability and content protection issues and discuss how the changes in content creation, distribution, aggregation and user experience are significantly changing the game for distributors, service provides and hardware and software suppliers. Galuten is Vice President of Media Technology at Sony Interactive Entertainment.

“We are excited and honoured to have Albhy Galuten as the keynote speaker of the HbbTV Symposium and Awards 2018, underlining the potential of HbbTV as a technology enabler for US and European content producers and distributors,” said Vincent Grivet (TDF), Chair of the HbbTV Association.

Andre Prahl, Chairman of Deutsche TV-Plattform, said: “The HbbTV standard is constantly evolving. New features offer great potential for the entire media industry and deliver real added value for viewers and customers. The German TV Platform has been involved in the development of HbbTV from the very beginning and we are looking forward to an exciting event with the HbbTV Association in Berlin.”

Galuten’s keynote is part of the two-day conference programme of the HbbTV Symposium and Awards 2018. Other highlights are the roundtable discussion ‘How can HbbTV help broadcasters better compete within a global marketplace?’ and the panel ‘Growing advertising value: the business and the technology’, focusing on addressable advertising, which has gone from R&D demonstration to live services last year, growing real business value for broadcasters.

The conference agenda also includes the roundtable discussion ‘Growing the TV Business with HbbTV: What’s needed in the future?’, looking at the development of HbbTV in the next 3 to 5 years, as well as the panel ‘Growing viewers’ choice: The value of HbbTV for operators’, discussing the latest HbbTV specification aimed at operators.

About the HbbTV Association
Hybrid broadcast broadband TV (or “HbbTV”) is a global initiative aimed at harmonising the broadcast and broadband delivery of entertainment services to consumers through connected TVs, set-top boxes and multiscreen devices. The HbbTV specification is developed by industry leaders to improve the video user experience for consumers by enabling innovative, interactive services over networks. The specification uses elements of existing specifications from other standards including OIPF, CEA, DVB, MPEG-DASH and W3C. With the incorporation of activities from the Open IPTV Forum (OIPF) in 2014 and Smart TV Alliance in 2016, HbbTV is able to address service providers and technology suppliers for IPTV services as well as the combined scope of broadcast and over-the-top (OTT) services.

This year, the 7th HbbTV Symposium and Awards will take place on November 14-15 in Berlin. Registration is possible here. The Symposium is in collaboration with Deutsche TV-Plattform and the overall theme is “Growing Value Through HbbTV“. More information: https://www.hbbtv.org/news-events/hbbtv-symposium-and-awards/

About Deutsche TV-Plattform
The German TV Platform is an association of more than 50 private and public broadcasters, streaming-providers, equipment manufacturers, infrastructure operators, service and technology providers, research institutes and universities, federal and state authorities and other companies, associations and institutions involved with digital media. Since its foundation in 1990, the aim of the registered association has been the introduction of digital technologies based on open standards. Representatives from almost all areas of the media industry and consumer electronics are involved in the working groups of the German TV Platform to set the course for key topics in digital broadcasting.

Contact HbbTV Association:
Heinrich E. Haase
Project Coordinator HbbTV Association
email: heinrich.haase@htbc.de
Tel: +49 160 96 25 37 92

Press Contacts:
Thomas Fuchs
Fuchs Media Consult GmbH
email: tfuchs@fuchsmc.com
Tel: +49 171 4483 168

Holger Crump
Fuchs Media Consult GmbH
email: hcrump@fuchsmc.com
Tel: +49 151 401 404 93

Contact Deutsche TV-Plattform:
Carine Chardon
Managing Director
email: chardon@tv-plattform.de
Tel: + 49 69 6302260

Press Contact:
Stefan Vollmer
email: vollmer@tv-plattform.de
Tel.: +49 151 22 676869

If you would like to be added to our mailing list for press releases, please contact HbbTV MarCom at communications@hbbtv.org.

Contact HbbTV Association:
Angelo Pettazzi
Chair HbbTV Marketing and Education Working Group (MEWG)
email: angelo.pettazzi@kineton.it
Tel: +39 335 7614 596