Management of Digital Video Broadcasting Services in Open Delivery Platforms

The future of Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB) is moving towards solutions offering an efficient way of carrying interactive IP multimedia services over digital terrestrial broadcasting networks to handheld terminals. One of the most promising technologies is Digital Video Broadcasting-Handheld (DVB-H), at present under standardisation. Services deployed via this type of DVB technologies should enjoy reliability comparable to TV services and high quality standards. However, the market at present does not provide effective and economical solutions for the deployment of such services over multi-domain IP networks, due to their high level of unreliability. This paper focuses on service management, service level agreement (SLA) and network performance requirements of DVB-H services. Experimental results are presented concerning QoS sensitivity to network performance of DVB-H services delivered over a multi-domain IP network. Moreover, a solution for efficient and cost effective service management via QoS monitoring and control and network SLA design is proposed. The solution gives DVB-H operators the possibility of fully managing service QoS without being tied to third party operators

Multimedia delivery in the future internet

The term “Networked Media” implies that all kinds of media including text, image, 3D graphics, audio and video are produced, distributed, shared, managed and consumed on-line through various networks, like the Internet, Fiber, WiFi, WiMAX, GPRS, 3G and so on, in a convergent manner [1]. This white paper is the contribution of the Media Delivery Platform (MDP) cluster and aims to cover the Networked challenges of the Networked Media in the transition to the Future of the Internet. Internet has evolved and changed the way we work and live. End users of the Internet have been confronted with a bewildering range of media, services and applications and of technological innovations concerning media formats, wireless networks, terminal types and capabilities. And there is little evidence that the pace of this innovation is slowing. Today, over one billion of users access the Internet on regular basis, more than 100 million users have downloaded at least one (multi)media file and over 47 millions of them do so regularly, searching in more than 160 Exabytes1 of content. In the near future these numbers are expected to exponentially rise. It is expected that the Internet content will be increased by at least a factor of 6, rising to more than 990 Exabytes before 2012, fuelled mainly by the users themselves. Moreover, it is envisaged that in a near- to mid-term future, the Internet will provide the means to share and distribute (new) multimedia content and services with superior quality and striking flexibility, in a trusted and personalized way, improving citizens’ quality of life, working conditions, edutainment and safety. In this evolving environment, new transport protocols, new multimedia encoding schemes, cross-layer inthe network adaptation, machine-to-machine communication (including RFIDs), rich 3D content as well as community networks and the use of peer-to-peer (P2P) overlays are expected to generate new models of interaction and cooperation, and be able to support enhanced perceived quality-of-experience (PQoE) and innovative applications “on the move”, like virtual collaboration environments, personalised services/ media, virtual sport groups, on-line gaming, edutainment. In this context, the interaction with content combined with interactive/multimedia search capabilities across distributed repositories, opportunistic P2P networks and the dynamic adaptation to the characteristics of diverse mobile terminals are expected to contribute towards such a vision. Based on work that has taken place in a number of EC co-funded projects, in Framework Program 6 (FP6) and Framework Program 7 (FP7), a group of experts and technology visionaries have voluntarily contributed in this white paper aiming to describe the status, the state-of-the art, the challenges and the way ahead in the area of Content Aware media delivery platforms

Delivering video services over IP networks

The main goal pursued in this Thesis is to contribute towards the design and development of an end-to-end solution/system that would assist in reliable, consistence, less packet-loss delivery of high-quality video signals of pre-recorded presentations, training lectures, live events such as seminars over standard IP networks. This Thesis will focus on the existing Internet Service Provider, Oman Telecommunications Company (Omantel) and its best delivery of high-bandwidth data such as video to its Local and regional offices and departments over IP networks. This video-over-IP system aims to accumulate the technical scientific knowledge required to be able to offer high-quality video, which is fully scalable over IP networks. It aims to convert this knowledge into experimental prototypes, which, after the Thesis, can be developed into an integrated generic environment for Video-over-IP service development and content production. The objective is to initially define the functionality of content Services that can be incorporated into the operations of Oman telecommunications company networks. Then define the functional characteristics and system requirements necessary for the deployment of content streaming services over Omantel IP based networks. The design of this system would be combined with streaming high-quality video, while maintaining scalability and bandwidth efficiencies required for large-scale enterprise deployment. The design would encompass various components that are needed to capture, store and deliver streaming video to desktops. It will investigate on what is required to deliver quality video over Omantel IP networks and will recommend the actual products and solutions for achieving the end result

Multimedia streaming adaptation IMS-networks

Introduction Multimedia services such as video, gaming and music marked the close of the last century and have become inextricably linked with our lives in the current century. The success and popularity of these services was fuelled by the explosive expansion of the Internet and the furious penetration of broadband networks. In particular, the use of multimedia streaming services on portable devices has been popular whenever both the content and the perceived delivery quality have met the expectations of end users. This chapter of the book does not address content aspects of multimedia streaming services. Such matters are left to media gurus and other researchers. Rather, this chapter focuses on the delivery quality of multimedia streaming services. Particular attention is paid to quality adaptation techniques intended to improve end users' experience of such services. Our scope includes heterogeneous networks and devices. The solutions presented are applicable to the telecommunications industry