Multimedia Home Platform
Multimedia Home Platform is an open middleware system standard designed by the DVB project for interactive digital television. The MHP enables the reception and execution of interactive, Java-based applications on a TV set. Interactive TV applications can be delivered over the broadcast channel, together with audio and video streams. These applications can be for example information services, games, interactive voting, e-mail, SMS or shopping. MHP applications can use an additional return channel that has to support IP.
Deployment
In May 2010 the largest deployments DVB-MHP are in Italy, Korea, Belgium and Poland with trials or small deployments in Germany, Spain, Austria, Colombia, Uruguay and Australia.MHP service was also offered in Finland by Finnish Broadcasting Corporation 50% of the Finnish households use the terrestrial network, where broadcasting of MHP applications can be really expensive, 2) TV broadcasters never told TV viewers about the MHP services—because the digitalization of the TV networks got extremely negative publicity in Finnish media, the broadcasters didn't want to upset their customers further if they had bought new expensive STBs which weren't capable of playing MHP apps, and 3) there were only a few MHP set-top boxes in the market—because Finland is such a small market, big manufacturers weren't interested in developing new MHP boxes just for Finland. MHP-capable STBs are no longer available in Finland.
The U.S. cable industry has specified its own middleware system referred as OCAP, which is largely based on MHP.
Currently, Belgium's largest cable provider Telenet is rolling out their DVB-MHP system, called DigiBox. Norway's upcoming terrestrial digital TV network NTV will also use the DVB-MHP standard. In late 2008 the Info+ channel in Greece started broadcasting DVB-MHP info, however since standards have not been set as of February 2009 for digital television in Greece, most TV sets and DVB-T receivers sold in the country do not feature DVB-MHP.
Technology
[Image:MHP-software stack english.png|frame|right|MHP software stack]The MHP specifies an extensive application execution environment for digital interactive TV, independent of the underlying, vendor-specific, hardware and software. This execution environment is based on the use of a Java virtual machine and the definition of generic APIs that provide access to the interactive digital TV terminal's typical resources and facilities. The interoperable MHP applications are running on top of these APIs. A so-called Navigator-application, which is part of the terminal software, allows the user the access to all MHP applications and other DVB services. Sometimes Navigator can be also a Java program itself but that is not a requirement.
The MHP is just a part of a family of specifications, which all base on the Globally Executable MHP -Standard, which was defined to allow the worldwide adoption of MHP.