Tag: Reference Applications

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7. Ensuring quality and compliance in HbbTV deployments

Posted on by Matthew Huntington

This article is the seventh in the ‘Understanding HbbTV‘ series, a collection of insights developed by the HbbTV Association to help broadcasters, developers, and technology partners make the most of the HbbTV standard. Each article explores a different aspect of hybrid television: from the core architecture and specification to business models, interoperability, case studies, and the wider regulatory landscape.

The goal of the series is to bridge technical knowledge and real-world practice, showing how HbbTV enables open, scalable, and innovative services that combine the best of broadcast and broadband. Whether you’re building your first HbbTV app or shaping the strategy behind a national service, these articles offer a practical foundation for understanding the standard and its ecosystem.

HbbTV’s success as a pan-European standard depends not just on its specifications, but on the ecosystem that ensures those specifications are implemented consistently. With thousands of device models and dozens of manufacturers, maintaining interoperability is a complex but essential task. That’s why the HbbTV community invests heavily in compliance testing, reference tools, and developer collaboration.

Why compliance matters

A viewer’s experience of an HbbTV application depends on both the app and the device it runs on. If a television or set-top box fails to implement part of the specification correctly, it can lead to problems such as incomplete display, crashes, or missing functionality. For broadcasters, that means brand risk, and for developers and viewers, frustration.

To prevent this, HbbTV has developed a comprehensive compliance and testing framework that helps manufacturers and app creators ensure that their products behave predictably and reliably.

The HbbTV test suite

At the heart of this framework is the HbbTV Test Suite, a collection of more than 3,400 unit tests covering every area of the specification, which manufacturers use these tests to certify new devices.

The test suite represents a major investment by the HbbTV community, and is continuously updated to reflect changes in the specification and industry practices. It’s the foundation for ensuring that all compliant devices deliver a consistent hybrid TV experience.

Reference applications and tools

HbbTV maintains a set of reference applications designed to help developers and manufacturers verify interoperability in real-world conditions. These include:

  • The HbbTV DASH & DRM Reference App – focused on testing video playback, encryption, and adaptive bitrate behaviour.
  • A planned Extended Reference App – designed to broaden coverage to UI rendering, application lifecycle, and API behaviour.

Reference apps provide a shared benchmark for both broadcasters and device makers, helping to identify inconsistencies early and encourage collaboration across the ecosystem.

The zoo directory

To make testing easier, the HbbTV Zoo Directory lists testing facilities (known as “zoos”) where developers can access a wide range of HbbTV-compliant devices for validation and debugging. Some zoos offer remote testing, allowing teams around the world to verify app behaviour without needing every TV model in-house.

This network of test environments supports a more agile and distributed approach to HbbTV development, reducing time-to-market for new applications and updates.

The HbbTV developer portal

The HbbTV Developer Portal is the central hub for technical documentation, sample code, and community support. It brings together guidance on APIs, test tools, and interoperability resources, and hosts links to plugfest registration, test suite access, and the HbbTV reference app.

Operating along side the developer portal is the HbbTV developer Slack channel. Developers can also use the channel to share feedback, report issues, and join discussions that can shape the future of the specification.

Plugfests and interoperability events

To strengthen collaboration between device manufacturers and broadcasters, HbbTV organises regular interop events or “plugfests.” At these events, developers and engineers meet to test real applications on a wide range of TVs and exchange feedback in a practical, hands-on setting.

Last summer the plugfest was hosted in Milan in June 2025 and was the first to combine in-person and remote participation, allowing teams from across the globe to connect virtually and test devices in real time.

Quality monitoring and issue tracking

Even with strong compliance, unexpected behaviour can occur once applications are live. To support continuous improvement, industry bodies and regulators can establish shared monitoring processes, gathering and analysing interoperability reports to identify patterns and prevent recurring issues.

This type of market-level collaboration ensures that the HbbTV ecosystem remains stable, trusted, and continuously improving.

Building confidence across the ecosystem

Through its investment in compliance tools, shared testing, and open collaboration, HbbTV ensures that viewers experience hybrid television as it was intended — simple, consistent, and engaging, regardless of device or brand.

For developers, these resources make HbbTV one of the most mature and reliable open standards in the media industry, a ecosystem that rewards innovation, and interoperability.

In the next ‘Understanding HbbTV’ article, we’ll showcase how these principles translate into real-world HbbTV deployments and success stories across Europe.

Webinar announcement: Inside HbbTV DRM

Posted on by Matthew Huntington

Standards, market insights and real-world deployments

Digital Rights Management (DRM) is a key component in delivering premium content securely across connected TV environments. With the growing deployment of HbbTV services and hybrid applications, broadcasters, platform operators and device manufacturers are increasingly focusing on standardised DRM solutions to ensure interoperability, reliability and a seamless viewer experience.

The next HbbTV webinar on Wednesday, 29 October, 15:00-16:00 CET, offers an overview of the technical foundations and current status of DRM within the HbbTV ecosystem. Industry experts will share insights into guidelines, deployment practices and real-world use cases, providing valuable perspectives for broadcasters, manufacturers and technology providers.

Agenda

HbbTV DRM guidelines and standardisation

Speaker: Jon Piesing, Vice-Chairman, HbbTV Association & Chairman, HbbTV Specification Group
Jon Piesing will outline the latest HbbTV DRM guidelines, explaining how standardised approaches ensure compatibility across devices and services, and highlight upcoming developments.

DRM from the conditional access and security provider perspective

Speaker: Thierry Thévoz, Principal Software Architect, Nagra
Thierry Thévoz will present the viewpoint of a leading CA and security solutions provider, exploring DRM–CA integration, deployment challenges and the need for robust content protection in hybrid TV environments.

The Italian perspective: implementing DRM in broadcaster environments

Speaker: Fabio Guarnaccia, Scenario Analysis Manager – Strategic Marketing, Mediaset
Fabio Guarnaccia will share insights from the Italian market, where broadcasters are introducing DRM to protect and monetise premium content, with lessons from real-world implementation.

Market reality: Insights from the DASH-DRM reference application

Speaker: Juha Joki, Technical Director, Sofia Digital
Juha Joki will present findings from the DASH-DRM Reference Application, offering practical observations on DRM performance in real deployments and market readiness.

Q&A session with all speakers

Moderator: Jörn Krieger, Journalist

Registration
Please sign up here to attend the webinar:

HbbTV Reference Applications: Enhancing interoperability and conformance across the ecosystem

Posted on by Matthew Huntington

In a recent HbbTV webinar, leading voices from across the connected TV ecosystem gathered to explore the role of reference applications in supporting conformance, interoperability, and robust application development. Hosted during the European summer, the session drew substantial interest despite its technical depth, a clear sign of the growing importance of reference applications in the development and testing of HbbTV services.

The webinar featured insights from Bob Campbell (Global Head of Conformance and Interoperability at Resillion), Mark Reilly and Alex Russell (Senior Architect and Controller of Technical Partnerships at Everyone TV), and Mirko Nedeljkovic (CEO of Suitest). Each speaker addressed different but complementary aspects of HbbTV reference apps, ranging from foundational concepts and real-world implementations to remote testing practices and collaborative tools.

This article offers an overview of the themes discussed and highlights key takeaways from each speaker’s presentation.

Why reference applications matter

The HbbTV ecosystem depends on a combination of technical standards, conformance tools, and collaborative testing practices to ensure that applications work reliably across a diverse range of devices and use cases. Reference applications play a pivotal role by demonstrating how HbbTV features should work in practice. They complement formal conformance tests by focusing on real-world interoperability, user experience validation, and system-level integration.

Bob Campbell opened the webinar by framing the discussion within this wider context. He explained that while the HbbTV conformance test suite provides essential unit-level validation (with over 3,000 tests covering APIs and functional requirements), it is not designed to test how features interact in the context of full applications or services. This is where reference applications step in, to provide executable, observable, and reusable implementations that illustrate how specifications behave in actual use.

Bob Campbell (Resillion): Building and using reference applications effectively

Bob Campbell’s presentation laid out the distinction between conformance (unit testing of specification compliance) and interoperability (system-level functionality across devices and services). His key message: reference apps help fill the interoperability gap by allowing vendors, developers, and test labs to validate more complex scenarios involving content playback, UI interactions, and platform-specific behaviours.

Characteristics of good reference applications

According to Campbell, a good reference application must:

  • Be easy to understand, both in function and expected outcomes.
  • Be globally accessible and free of restrictions like geo-blocking.
  • Remain stable and version-controlled, avoiding frequent untracked changes.
  • Be well-documented, enabling test teams to understand its user journey and expected states.
  • Provide insight into what “good” looks like, particularly important in remote or automated testing environments.

He also emphasized the value of transparency: HbbTVs DRM reference app, for example, is fully open source and hosted on GitHub, enabling manufacturers and developers to inspect the implementation directly. The application includes scenarios for multiple DRM schemes, live streaming, subtitles, and adaptive bitrate streaming, with new features introduced in a staged manner across test, staging, and production environments.

HbbTV DASH-DRM Reference Application

Best practices and plugfests

Campbell outlined how HbbTV’s reference app is tested across a “zoo” of 20–25 devices and continuously updated. He also shared Resillion’s experiences organizing virtual Plugfests, including a recent session in Shenzhen in collaboration with Suitest. These events enable geographically distributed developers and manufacturers, especially in Asia, to validate apps and devices without the need for travel. Reference apps were a critical component in enabling remote testing and ensuring consistent expectations across participants.

Mark Reilly (Everyone TV): Implementing a complex reference use case

Mark Reilly provided a developer’s perspective, showcasing a highly specific reference application built to support Everyone TV’s Freely service. This reference app is centred on an OpApp implementation using a secondary video window, a sophisticated setup that allows IP-based channels to be shown alongside HbbTV UI layers.

The OpApp secondary video window

Everyone TV’s OpApp enables access to over 150 channels across DTT and IP, through a dedicated video window while maintaining a user interface layer for guide information and interactivity. The secondary video window operates as a separate application and uses dash.js for playback, along with Media Source Extensions (MSE) and Encrypted Media Extensions (EME) for handling PlayReady SL2000 and SL3000 DRM.

Reilly explained that this proof-of-concept app was created in parallel with specification development to enable early prototyping and debugging. While not a formal conformance app, it has served as a valuable developer aid and reference point for manufacturers integrating support for the Freely service.

Architecture and communication

The setup involves multiple composited elements:

  • The OpApp provides the main user interface.
  • A secondary video window handles playback.
  • A graphics window supports subtitles.

These layers are composited on the terminal using a defined z-order. Communication between the app and the terminal occurs via JSON-RPC over WebSockets, enabling status updates, playback control, and channel selection. Metrics such as buffer state, bitrate, CPU usage, and proximity to live edge are continuously tracked and visualized to assess performance.

Reilly shared examples of issues identified using this framework, such as ad stream playback failures due to CORS misconfiguration and bandwidth contention scenarios where devices adjust representation quality dynamically.

Alex Russell (Everyone TV): From reference to conformance with TaCO

Expanding on Reilly’s presentation, Alex Russell introduced Everyone TV’s TaCO app (Test and Conformance OpApp). Whereas the secondary video window app focused on playback, TaCO targets key API coverage across the OpApp specification (HbbTV 1.2.1).

TaCO: Two apps in one

TaCO is both:

  • A real OpApp implementation used to initiate API calls and receive responses.
  • A test app capable of executing automated or manual test packages.

TaCO is designed to separate usability and presentation from API validation. It uses on-screen logging and user prompts to help verify behaviour, with test packs updated independently of the main application. While some tests require manual input (e.g., checking time accuracy), the goal is to maximize automation.

Everyone TV’s Test and Conformance OpApp (TaCO)

Role in conformance

Unlike the Freely video window app, TaCO is explicitly part of Everyone TV’s conformance process. Device manufacturers seeking to use the Freely trademark must run TaCO, verify results, and collaborate with Everyone TV on resolving failures. The application is effective at uncovering unimplemented APIs, malformed responses, and stubbed-out functionality, critical issues for ensuring spec compliance and device readiness.

Russell also announced the formation of a new HbbTV Study Mission Group called Test and Conformance Apps (TaCA) which will investigate how reference applications can be more systematically incorporated into HbbTV tools and practices. Topics include licensing, versioning, and the validation of community-contributed apps.

Mirko Nedeljkovic (Suitest): Remote testing at scale

The final presentation came from Mirko Nedeljkovic, CEO of Suitest, who discussed a groundbreaking interoperability event held in Shenzhen. Conducted in partnership with Resillion, the event marked the first-ever Plugfest in the APAC region.

Virtual plugfest setup

Suitest specializes in OTT test automation for living room devices, with deep support for HbbTV. During the event, eight Android and Fire TV OS devices from TCL, Skyworth, and TCL Mocha were connected to the Suitest platform, enabling developers in Europe to test HbbTV and Android apps remotely.

Key features of the remote setup included:

  • Virtual remote controls
  • Real-time video streaming from test devices (via phone cameras or HDMI capture)
  • On-screen console logs and performance data
  • Dedicated local streaming server to reduce latency (100–200ms to the UK)

Participants were able to test pre-production models, compare behaviour with retail devices, and interact directly with manufacturers via video link.

Test rigs for remote interoperability event

Lessons learned

Nedeljkovic highlighted the benefits and challenges of remote testing:

  • Positive feedback on real-time interaction and early access to devices
  • Desire for broader manufacturer participation and more detailed device specifications
  • Importance of planning, especially for ensuring video capture compatibility and network access

He noted that despite the technical complexity, the remote Plugfest matched the effectiveness of in-person events while aligning with broader industry goals around sustainability and reduced travel.

Panel and Q&A: Performance, certification, and standards evolution

In the concluding panel session, the speakers addressed several audience questions, covering:

  • The role of reference apps in setting performance expectations: While difficult to define objectively, performance can be measured through metrics like playback speed and transition latency, as in targeted advertising specs.
  • Integration with test tools like Resillion’s Ligada: Ligada can already automate testing of HbbTV reference apps.
  • API usage and tag strategy: Questions about the use of multiple video tags and HTML objects were deferred to GitHub issue tracking, emphasizing the open-source and collaborative nature of the reference apps.
  • Focus handling and UI robustness: Future iterations of test apps may include more scenarios involving key event management to ensure smooth user control.

Conclusion

This webinar offered a comprehensive look into how reference applications are enabling more robust and interoperable HbbTV deployments across the globe. From open-source examples like the DRM reference app to complex implementations such as Everyone TV’s OpApp, the ecosystem is embracing reference apps as critical tools, not only for developers and testers but also for manufacturers and certifiers.

As HbbTV services continue to grow in scope and complexity, the importance of collaborative testing, remote validation, and community-driven tool development will only increase. The initiatives discussed during the session, especially the launch of the TaCA study mission group, signal a strong commitment to evolving the HbbTV ecosystem with openness, scalability, and quality at its core.

Matthew Huntington
Manager of the HbbTV Developer Programme

Webinar announcement: Reference Test Applications explained

Posted on by Matthew Huntington

Ensuring long term compatibility of streaming services on an ever-evolving set of streaming devices is a key problem for the industry. Huge amounts of time and money are spent each year ensuring the availability of services for viewers and ensuring support and maintenance costs remain manageable. 

The HbbTV association’s next webinar, on 1 July 2025, 10:00-11:00 CEST, will review some of the most recent approaches taken by platform operators, test services providers and media services companies to create reference test applications and test tools which build on top of HbbTV, DASH and PlayReady. We will look at four approaches recently deployed and discuss the benefits of test tooling and test applications to allow the industry to confidently launch services that will be enjoyed by customers for years to come! 

Join us for an engaging discussion with industry leaders on the cutting-edge approach to ensuring interoperability. 
 
Agenda 

  • Building test suites and reference apps – Resillion summarise the approaches taken, benefits and improvements available from adding reference applications to our armoury of testing tools.
  • Reference Player and TACO – Everyone TV detail the use cases for IP video streaming validation and a reference HbbTV Operator Application in the approval process for Freely devices. 
  • Interoperability with remote devices – Suitest feedback on the approach and findings from a testing event where remote test devices were made available in Shenzhen. 

Speakers 

  • Alex Russell – Controller of Technical Partnerships, Everyone TV 
  • Mark Riley – Senior Architect, Everyone TV
  • Bob Campbell – Global Head of Conformance and Interoperability, Resillion 
  • Fan Zhang – Testing Operation Director, Resillion 
  • Mirko Nedeljkovic – CEO, Suitest 
  • Jörn Krieger – Moderator 

Who should attend? 

This webinar is designed for platform operators, streaming service providers, test suite designers, device manufacturers and streaming video application designers looking to understand how to demonstrate support for applications and services across the horizontal market of streaming devices. 

Registration
Please sign up here to attend the webinar: https://register.gotowebinar.com/register/7534390683222533723

We look forward to your participation in this live session.

Google releases HbbTV sample app for linear addressable advertising

Posted on by Matthew Huntington

A new HbbTV sample application showcasing linear addressable TV capabilities has been released by Google, providing developers with a ready-to-use framework for building advanced advertising solutions. This application, powered by Google DAI pods, enables enhanced ad experiences for HbbTV 2.0 enabled devices.

Linear addressable TV allows broadcasters and advertisers to deliver personalised ads to individual viewers, increasing engagement and return on investment. This new sample application demonstrates how to seamlessly replace traditional linear ad breaks with targeted digital ads within HbbTV, ensuring a consistent and uninterrupted viewing experience.

Comprehensive developer documentation has been made available accompanying the sample application which has been published on Github.

“Developers can now easily integrate Dynamic Ad Substitution (DAS) into their HbbTV applications with this open source code.” said David Uhlmann, Head of Video Solutions EMEA at Google.

The sample application uses Media Source Extension (MSE) but doesn’t support HbbTV-TA, to achieve support for the broadest range of devices. 

Google is keen to receive feedback, which can be submitted through Github issues.

Improved conformance tool ensures interoperability for DASH delivery

Posted on by jorn@hbbtv

A freely available tool that validates the conformance of DASH content to relevant media specifications has been improved thanks to a collaboration between five industry bodies. The DASH-IF Conformance Tool is available as either an online service or open-source software.

While the MPEG DASH (Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP) specifications describe client behaviour, conformance of DASH content is important for interoperability.

The Conformance Tool was launched by DASH-IF over a decade ago and has been continuously updated and extended to test against relevant specifications from other bodies. A joint project undertaken over the past two years has improved the tool, making it more reliable and accessible. Along with DASH content conformance, the new tool has options to check for CMAF and WAVE requirements, and for HLS (HTTP Live Streaming) requirements as well.

The JCCP (Joint Content Conformance Partners) was funded by the HbbTV Association along with DASH-IF, the DVB Project, the Consumer Technology Association® WAVE (Web Application Video Ecosystem) Project, and ATSC. The project partners encourage the use of the tool by the industry and look forward to receiving feedback that can lead to further enhancements and improvements.

The DASH-IF Conformance Tool will be presented and discussed during the online OSMART Workshop #2 on December 6-7, 2023.

How DASH Works

Imagine you’re watching a movie on a streaming service like Netflix or YouTube. The movie starts playing right away, even though the entire movie hasn’t finished downloading. This is possible thanks to a technology called Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (DASH). DASH makes it possible to watch videos smoothly and without interruption, even if your internet connection is slow or unreliable.

When you watch streaming video using DASH, your device will automatically choose the best quality video stream based on your device’s capabilities and the speed of your internet connection. This way, you can enjoy the best possible video quality without buffering or interruptions.