Multimedia Home Platform

Multimedia Home Platform (DVB-MHP) is an open middleware system standard designed by the DVB project for interactive digital television.

], Belgium's largest cable provider Telenet is rolling out their DVB-MHP system, called DigiBox.

[2] In late 2008 the Info+ channel in Greece (part of the ERT Digital platform) started broadcasting DVB-MHP info,[3] 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.

[4] 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.

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 (like TV and radio).

Typical upstream backchannels are phone line or broadband Internet connection (ADSL, or 56k in Italy, using a modem included in the set-top box).