The International MHEG Promotion Alliance (IMPALA) has announced that Giri Valliappan has joined the organisation as director of market development.
According to a statement, Valliappan's mission is two-fold: to continue to promote and expand the market opportunities for MHEG-5 on a global basis and also to ensure the organisation delivers accurate information on MHEG-5 technology and developments.
"IMPALA was launched last year and was warmly welcomed by the market", said Valliappan. "Since then both it and the market have evolved — there are now seven major Supporter Members including Sony, Samsung, and Hitachi and Freeview (New Zealand). But there is still a considerable education job to be done on a global basis".
The MHEG-5 interactive TV standard is a public standard with country or region-specific profiles. Both free to air and pay TV broadcasters are now looking into MHEG-5 as a low cost middleware solution for deployment over terrestrial, satellite and cable platforms; another of IMPALA's roles is to provide guidance and advice to ensure the standard is adopted and implemented correctly.
Valliappan is already well known in the UK Digital TV community having been involved early on with the MHEG-5 ISO Working Group, various DTG technical groups and DigiTAG. He previously worked with founder member Cabot Communications in a variety of roles.
The founder members of IMPALA are Strategy & Technology (S&T), Cabot Communications and EchoStar Europe.
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