Bristol-based Cabot unveiled details today on the new version of its "Mercator" MHEG-5 engine.

The new version will support v1.06 of MHEG-5, the standard used for digital text and interactive services on digital terrestrial television in the UK.

"With over 1.5 million deployments in the UK for the Cabot MHEG-5 engine Mercator, Cabot has played a leading role in the development of the new specification," said Cabot Communications Managing Director Keith Potter. "We have been directly involved in the specification process of the MHEG v1.06 profile and have significantly contributed to the development of the associated DTG MHEG Test Suite.

"The new conformance test requirements from the DTG are much more rigorous than for the previous MHEG-5 v1.05 generation, which means that weaker, less compliant MHEG-5 engines will have their deficiencies highlighted before they go to market. Cabot has invested over 2 man-years extending Mercator to enable our customer base of over 20 OEMs to support the latest digital TV interactive standards."

The new version, Cabot says, is faster and has a smaller memory footprint.