It is clear that HbbTV services can be activated by a user when user end device (TV or set-top-box) is connected to Internet. In that case a procedure of HbbTV service activation can be simply described as follows:
Currently, smart TV technology offers users digital television and a lot of interactive services. Users can watch linear broadcast (TV or audio) programmes (left part of Fig. 2) and they can also activate smart platform (e.g. Samsung Smart Hub) offering access to a number of attractive applications utilizing broadband connection of TV set to provide necessary information (right part of Fig. 2 - Portal).
However, these applications are called as broadcast independent applications, i.e. they have no close relation to broadcast linear service (content).
Fig. 2 shows how HbbTV can integrate these applications and some of them to tie up to broadcasting services [5].
As was already mentioned, HbbTV technology supports broadcast related as well as broadcast independent applications. The broadcast independent applications have no relations to any broadcasting service and they just allow the users to play games or access web social networks like e.g. Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, Youtube or other web services providing required information (e.g. weather). However, the HbbTV standard doesn’t specify concrete access mechanisms for them and manufacturers (or even third party operators) can develop and implement flexible portals where users can find and access applications they are interested in. Fig 2 also shows broadcast related applications which are activated by red button (or e.g. TXT button) and provide users with functions and information related to broadcasted content (quiz, voting, EPG).