IP-Based TV Technologies, Services and Multidisciplinary Applications

The move to Internet Protocol (IP)-based content delivery services has challenged the television industry by allowing high-quality television content to be delivered using the Internet, wired and wireless, private and public. The new convergence paradigm is already playing out its disruptive role as television is now associated with both a personal and social experience using an ecosystem of devices. The unidirectional flow of content from an operator to a device has thus morphed into a much richer combination of real-time on-demand web and user generated content complementing traditional programming

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

Video Quality Prediction for Video over Wireless Access Networks (UMTS and WLAN)

Transmission of video content over wireless access networks (in particular, Wireless Local Area Networks (WLAN) and Third Generation Universal Mobile Telecommunication System (3G UMTS)) is growing exponentially and gaining popularity, and is predicted to expose new revenue streams for mobile network operators. However, the success of these video applications over wireless access networks very much depend on meeting the user’s Quality of Service (QoS) requirements. Thus, it is highly desirable to be able to predict and, if appropriate, to control video quality to meet user’s QoS requirements. Video quality is affected by distortions caused by the encoder and the wireless access network. The impact of these distortions is content dependent, but this feature has not been widely used in existing video quality prediction models. The main aim of the project is the development of novel and efficient models for video quality prediction in a non-intrusive way for low bitrate and resolution videos and to demonstrate their application in QoS-driven adaptation schemes for mobile video streaming applications. This led to five main contributions of the thesis as follows:(1) A thorough understanding of the relationships between video quality, wireless access network (UMTS and WLAN) parameters (e.g. packet/block loss, mean burst length and link bandwidth), encoder parameters (e.g. sender bitrate, frame rate) and content type is provided. An understanding of the relationships and interactions between them and their impact on video quality is important as it provides a basis for the development of non-intrusive video quality prediction models.(2) A new content classification method was proposed based on statistical tools as content type was found to be the most important parameter. (3) Efficient regression-based and artificial neural network-based learning models were developed for video quality prediction over WLAN and UMTS access networks. The models are light weight (can be implemented in real time monitoring), provide a measure for user perceived quality, without time consuming subjective tests. The models have potential applications in several other areas, including QoS control and optimization in network planning and content provisioning for network/service providers.(4) The applications of the proposed regression-based models were investigated in (i) optimization of content provisioning and network resource utilization and (ii) A new fuzzy sender bitrate adaptation scheme was presented at the sender side over WLAN and UMTS access networks. (5) Finally, Internet-based subjective tests that captured distortions caused by the encoder and the wireless access network for different types of contents were designed. The database of subjective results has been made available to research community as there is a lack of subjective video quality assessment databases.Partially sponsored by EU FP7 ADAMANTIUM Project (EU Contract 214751

Energy efficient mobile video streaming using mobility

Undeniably the support of data services over the wireless Internet is becoming increasingly challenging with the plethora of different characteristic requirements of each service type. Evidently, about half of the data traffic shifted across the Internet to date consists of multimedia content such as video clips or music files that necessitate stringent real-time constraints in playback and for which increasing volumes of data should be shifted with the introduction of higher quality content. This work recasts the problem of multimedia content delivery in the mobile Internet. We propose an optimization framework with the major tenet being that real-time playback constraints can be satisfied while at the same time enabling controlled delay tolerance in packet transmission by capitalizing on pre-fetching and data buffering. More specifically two strategies are proposed amenable for real time implementation that utilize the inherent delay tolerance of popular applications based on different flavors of HTTP streaming. The proposed mechanisms have the potential of achieving many-fold energy efficiency gains at no cost on the perceived user experience