New partnership to make its public debut at IBC on stands #1.D11 and #14.H09

Oberhausen, Germany, 7 September 2018 − ACCESS CO., LTD (stand #1.D11) and Castoola (stand #14.H06) today announced a collaboration to provide broadcasters and operators with a future-proofed HbbTV solution. Demonstrations of the new partnership will be held at IBC on the EKT stand #1.D11, and at Beenius stand #14.H06.  

The solution has been developed to address the interoperability challenges between client and server products for multiscreen from both companies and aims to reduce the time and costs spent developing and testing solutions for multi-platform delivery. Based on the HbbTV standard, the solution can be easily deployed to provide high quality multi-platform experiences.

Consisting of the Castoola HbbTV platform combined with ACCESS’ NetFront™ Browser BE, the joint offering simplifies the development, testing and deployment of HbbTV services to speed up time-to-market.

“Despite having the potential to offer consumers richer and more interactive viewing experiences, HbbTV has been held back by the industry’s slow progress,” said Dr Neale Foster, CEO of ACCESS Europe. “Fortunately, our collaboration with Castoola addresses this by providing broadcasters and operators a cost-efficient solution that allows consumers to access the high-quality experiences they deserve. We couldn’t be prouder of working with Castoola to put HbbTV firmly back on the route to becoming one of the most influential standards for digital TV.”

“Beenius and Castoola are industry leaders who always strive to adopt new technologies and be one of the firsts to implement them on the market. HbbTV is no exception, and with our HbbTV & Addressable TV platform, we are looking to deliver the highest possible added-value for our customers, which is not possible without complementary technical solutions that help us to deliver end-to-end solutions. Tests have shown that Castoola HbbTV platform and ACCESS HbbTV browser are working perfectly together and are interoperable. Cooperation helped us to upgrade our relationship to a partnership. We strongly believe that our collaboration with ACCESS is the one that will enable us to provide future-proof solutions that are based on the HbbTV standard, so we are very happy to walk this path together with them,” said Mr. Filip Remškar, CEO at Beenius and Castoola.

Since its inception in the 1980s, ACCESS has continually demonstrated its commitment to supporting industry standards throughout its product porfolio. Today, the NetFront™ Browser family and ACCESS Twine™ solutions support HTML5, HbbTV 1.5, HbbTV 2.0.1, BML, Hybridcast, UK Freeview Play 2017, YouTube on TV and uPnP, as well as device operating systems such as Linux, iOS and Android. With additional developments in the automotive and IoT spaces, ACCESS continues to develop solutions for the ever-changing connected entertainment industry.