Colombia. The increase in the presence in homes of televisions called Smart TVs, with their own digital content platforms, generated an alert from European television channels for the possible loss of viewers. In response, the Red Button for internet-connected TVs emerged.
Pere Vila, engineer of Spanish Television, TVE, explained that the HbbTV platform, known as Red Button, allows viewers to access additional content of the channel that they are watching at the moment from a Smart TV, with just pressing the red button of the remote control.
He commented during the Bogotá Audiovisual Market, BAM, that "This interface, supported from the DVB T2 and HTML5, offers on-demand content fed with the information available to the channels for mobile devices, so it is a very economical platform to create. It was a decision of the European industry that any channel can adopt."
But getting to this development was not easy. It required a work with the manufacturers of the SmartTV televisions that are sold in Europe to include the software that allows you to talk the content from the red button that today bring the controls of these televisions. Due to the success of this platform, the HbbTV Association was created, which promotes the development of the Red Button.
The success in Europe is due to the penetration of digital television, which exceeds 70% in most countries in the area. But on the possibility of a Red Button in Latin America, where there are countries like Colombia that pay TV have a penetration of 75%, Pere Vila indicated that:
"This is an effort to let the viewer know that something is being done for them. And since the cost of implementation is low, I recommend that it is better to have it. Colombia should take advantage of the fact that it has the DVB T2 model and ask for advice now that it is in implementation, then it will be very difficult."
