Challenges for multi-screen TV apps

HbbTV, an emerging standard for interactive television, is being deployed in various European countries, creating bandwidth demand for interactive services in existing saturated broadcast networks. It is a first step in the direction of TV apps, but we believe the winning technology in that area is multi-screen apps on and around the TV. In this paper, we describe the current situation with HbbTV and apps, what can be done with existing technologies, high-potential scenarios and our plans to make them possible by combining existing standards with limited extensions, creating a platform implementing a multi-application service model, and open source software tools spanning management and production of this new type of service, within the Coltram project.