Smart TV is booming today, and premium web content has become a must-have for connected devices. Opera Software and Vestel announce their partnership to deliver Opera’s TV products on Vestel Smart TVs and set-top boxes. Vestel devices powered by Opera’s ultimate web experience will ship globally later this year.

Vestel is the largest TV producer in Europe, shipping over 10 million TVs yearly, and is one of the continent’s leading set-top box producers.

Starting this year, Vestel will deploy its TVs and set-top boxes with the Opera Devices SDK and Opera’s HbbTV technology, which already powers millions of devices shipped by over 50 manufacturers worldwide. By integrating Opera’s TV products on Vestel TVs, Opera’s technology will now work on advanced MStar chipsets. Next year, Vestel devices will also ship with the Opera TV Browser, giving users a seamless browsing experience based on Opera’s powerful engine.

“Opera is providing one of the leading browsers for the Smart TV market,” says Hakan Kutlu, Deputy General Manager, Vestel. “Popular web services for TV are moving in the direction of HTML5, and new web standards for TV are rapidly emerging. To ensure a long-term browser partner to fulfill our ambitions to run these services, we’ve opted to launch our Smart TVs with Opera.”

“Opera Software, as an important member of the W3C and HbbTV consortium, is actively expanding HTML5 and HbbTV specifications, together with leading content providers,” says Lars Boilesen, CEO, Opera Software. “Thanks to this experience we are able to bring this emerging technology to Vestel easily, and we look forward to powering the web entertainment experience of the next million viewers.”

Opera is demonstrating its enhanced Opera Devices SDK and the Opera TV Browser at the International Broadcast Cooperation Show 2012 in Amsterdam, being held September 7 – September 11, in booth 5.B47.