CableLabs - the US cable TV standards body - has finally published my overview of the MHP market in their SPECS newsletter (click here for the article).
Two related developments that were too late to make it into the piece:
- Italy's Senate approved a budget bill for 2007 just before Christmas that includes a measure aimed at subsidising integrated digital TV sets (IDTVs), and which the digital-terrestrial TV lobby would dearly like to make conditional on MHP being included in the sets. If so, it would represent another big boost for the European interactive TV standard (which, incidentally, is included as part of the DVD Blu-Ray spec). Full story in this week's New Media Markets.
- Via Licensing, the LA-based outfit which brings together the MHP patent holders in a patent licensing pool, tells me the patent-holders still haven't signed off on the MHP patent licensing agreements. Given that all it takes is a simple signature, there must be something afoot, surely (sign-off was expected by early autumn 2006). Rumour has it that one of the patent-holders could have dropped out.
