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_Australian Broadcasters Reaffirm Support for MHP

02 September 2004

In a joint statement issued today (02/09/2004), Australia's free-to-air broadcasters confirmed their commitment to a common platform for digital terrestrial services based on open standards. The broadcasters have indicated that, as a minimum, interactive set top boxes for the Australian market should be manufactured to the MHP 1.0.2 standard including the ability to support a browser based on open standards.

Free-to-air broadcasters will be authoring interactive applications in a mix of HTML and MHP. That is, some broadcasters are using a browser based on a subset of HTML or intend to do so, others will be using MHP and some will use both. As an industry, the broadcasters have called on manufacturers to support the common platform by ensuring that interactive set top boxes for the Australian market are able to receive all interactive applications from all free-to-air broadcasters.

Broadcasters have also stipulated that set top boxes should be “forward compatible”. That is that applications authored for first generation interactive boxes should also be receivable on later versions.