HTML is short for HyperText Markup Language. It is a markup language belonging to the SGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language) family.

Currently, the HTML state of the art is framed in the HTML version 4.0 standard as defined by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). However, much web content is still presented in an HTML 3.2 conformant manner.

TV set-top boxes that employ HTML are generally built around an HTML 3.2 core which means that web content that needs to be deployed to the PC-based browser and the TV viewer needs to be downgraded to be compatible with that standard version.

Browser manufacturers are still yet to release fully HTML 4.0 compliant browsers.

The strategic importance of HTML version 4.0 is to separate document content from presentation style. This means that certain techniques are deprecated in favor of the use of style sheets.

This adds much complexity to the JavaScript support since its API to those style controls is not as well standardized as the underlying Document Object Model (DOM). However, there is also significant flexibility in the new styling model, and to date, the MSIE browser has made great strides in implementing a robust styling model that provides many Dynamic HTML capabilities.