MHEG-5, orISO/IEC 13522–5,[1] is part of a set of international standards relating to the presentation of multimedia information, standardised by theMultimedia andHypermedia Experts Group (MHEG). It is most commonly used as a language to describeinteractive television services.
MHEG-5 is a licence-free and public standard for interactive TV middleware that is used both to send and receive interactive TV signals. It allows a wide range of TV-centric interactive services to be deployed. It is used byFreeview andFreesat in the UK,Freeview in New Zealand,TVB in Hong Kong,Freeview in Australia,Saorview in Ireland and has been specified in South Africa.
Recent[when?] work by the DTG in the UK has led to the development of the MHEG-5 Interaction Channel (MHEG-IC), which enables an extension of broadcast interactive services to be delivered via an IP connection. The principles behind the MHEG-IC are to provide a seamless viewer experience of broadcast delivered content augmented with content delivered over IP as an extension of the channel or network. Broadcasters have full editorial control of the user experience. The MHEG-IC gives access to streamed on-demand video content in addition to traditional text and graphics as well as the ability to support secure transactions.
MHEG-5 is anobject-baseddeclarative programming language which can be used to describe a presentation of text, images and video. An MHEG-5 application consists of a number ofScenes which the user of the application can move between. EachScene lists the items of text and graphics to be presented and can contain blocks ofprocedural code which are executed in response to one of a predefined set ofevents such as keys being pressed, timers firing or content being successfully loaded into memory. These blocks of code consist ofelementary actions which can perform operations such as changing the text displayed by a textobject, or starting a video clip playing.
MHEG-5 specifies a hierarchy of classes that are available to the application author. Unlike inobject oriented languages, it is not possible for new classes to be defined. The standard defines two representations of MHEG applications, one of which is textual and the other is represented inASN.1. Applications are normally written in the textual notation and then encoded into ASN.1 for interpretation by the MHEGengine.
MHEG-5 is suited to programminginteractive kiosks andinteractive television services.
MHEG-5 has been selected as the mandatory interactivity engine forCI+ compliant TVs (and other CI+ devices).
The MHEG-5 language itself is just that, a language. To be useful in any particular context, the language needs to beprofiled.A broadcast profile of the language has been standardized byETSI, forming ETSI standard ES 202 184.
In theUnited Kingdom, MHEG-5 is used to provideinteractive services for digital television such as the BBCsCeefax replacement service,BBC Red Button. The full specification of how MHEG-5 is used in the context of the UKFreeview platform is theUK Profile of MHEG-5. MHEG is also used onFreesat for its programming guide in addition to the DVB EIT, as opposed to the OpenTV platform used on Sky.
InNew Zealand, the same profile as in UK is used, with minor additions for the Maori language and its use of theguide key oncertified Freeview receivers. Theguide receiver key is used to activate the MHEG-5 programming guide; this however disables use of the more compatible and faster loading DVB EIT guide feature. In Australia, this guide practice was adopted for the phase 2 Freeview andVAST receivers referenced by the labelFreeview EPG.
In Hong Kong,TVB has also selected MHEG-5 for interactive services available on its digital-only channels.[2]
Ireland has selected MHEG-5 (v1.06) middleware for interactive services as a recommended feature of its Minimum Receiver Requirements for DTT in Ireland.[3] The name for Ireland's free digital service isSaorview.
Note: You can download the PDF version of above image fromhttp://mheg5.net/down/class.pdf.
