Swisscom TV 2.0 brings HbbTV to SRG channels
Swisscom will switch on the multimedia teletext successor on Tuesday. HbbTV will be available on the SRG's HD channels. However, the new service is also controversial.
"The interactive television experience offers our viewers essential additional information, which we will continue to add over the coming years," said Roger de Weck, Director General of SRG, in a statement. HbbTV can also be received on the ARD, ZDF, ORF 1 and ORF 2 channels.
Traditional teletext is still a popular media channel in Switzerland, with around 800,000 people accessing news and other information on their TV every day. Hybrid Broadcast Broadband TV, or HbbTV for short, is now opening up new possibilities to complement this: Thanks to the connection to the Internet, TV viewers can access interactive content. Swisscom is now launching HbbTV for all Swisscom TV 2.0 customers. The new service brings multimedia content to the screen parallel to the television program. Viewers can, for example, access additional interactive information on the current television program or online video libraries and actively participate in televoting. Texts, sports results and weather forecasts are supplemented with images.
Roger de Weck, Director General of SRG: "The audience follows our broadcasts both on the channels and via the Internet. This makes the close interaction between channels and the Internet all the more important: between broadcast and broadband. Interactive television HbbTV or SmartTV offers our viewers essential additional information, which we will continue to add to in the coming years."
Criticism and fears in the run-up
In the run-up to the introduction of HbbTV in Switzerland, the Swiss Media Association expressed particular concern (Werbewoche.ch reported). The publishers criticized, among other things, that HbbTV could be the first step towards the introduction of online advertising by SRG. In contrast to the classic online sector, advertising is permitted in teletext and is therefore also permitted on HbbTV via the TV signal. SRG media spokesperson Daniel Steiner rejects these concerns for the time being in an interview with Werbewoche.ch: "The current technical trial license for HbbTV does not allow SRG SSR to place advertising or links to online stores on its HbbTV services." It is up to the responsible authority (Federal Council/Uvek/Bakom) to decide whether this will change at some point. In the consultation on the new Radio and Television Ordinance (RTVO), SRG had argued in favor of opening up advertising and justified this.
The SRG statement is available on the Bakom page can be viewed online (point 4, Link PDF). In it, SRG writes, among other things, that in contrast to the online offerings, advertising and sponsorship in SRG's teletext has "always been virtually undisputed" and the public is used to it - it therefore seems logical that SRG should also be able to commercialize the successor service. Not least in order to "at least partially" compensate for the loss of income from teletext.
Another thorn in the side of the Swiss Media Association is the possible commercial exploitation of user data: "HbbTV also enables TV broadcasters to (...) collect user data and exploit it further. This also competes with the private media houses and their offerings. With HbbTV, customers pay twice: with their fees and with their data." What happens to all the user data? "SRG only uses a small amount of data and does not pass it on," says Steiner. The Data protection regulations could be accessed directly on the SRG's HbbTV service. (hae/pd)
