Multimedia broadcast and internet satellite system design and user trial results

The EU funded project, System for Advanced Multimedia Broadcast and IT Services (SAMBITS), has created an enhanced and synchronised, multimedia terminal for merging satellite broadcast and internet telecommunication services in a way that efficiently combines the large bandwidth of the broadcast channel and the interactivity of the internet. This paper proposes a novel broadcast and internet service concept, illustrates this concept with two service scenarios and develops a system architecture to demonstrate the range of key benefits provided by these new technologies. It then describes the interactive multimedia terminal that was used for consuming this new service concept. Finally, the results of the user trials on the terminal are presented and discussed

Digital recording of performing arts: formats and conversion

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Customized television: Standards compliant advanced digital television

This correspondence describes a European Union supported collaborative project called CustomTV based on the premise that future TV sets will provide all sorts of multimedia information and interactivity, as well as manage all such services according to each user’s or group of user’s preferences/profiles. We have demonstrated the potential of recent standards (MPEG-4 and MPEG-7) to implement such a scenario by building the following services: an advanced EPG, Weather Forecasting, and Stock Exchange/Flight Information

Building self-optimized communication systems based on applicative cross-layer information

This article proposes the Implicit Packet Meta Header(IPMH) as a standard method to compute and represent common QoS properties of the Application Data Units (ADU) of multimedia streams using legacy and proprietary streams’ headers (e.g. Real-time Transport Protocol headers). The use of IPMH by mechanisms located at different layers of the communication architecture will allow implementing fine per-packet selfoptimization of communication services regarding the actual application requirements. A case study showing how IPMH is used by error control mechanisms in the context of wireless networks is presented in order to demonstrate the feasibility and advantages of this approach

Service Platform for Converged Interactive Broadband Broadcast and Cellular Wireless

A converged broadcast and telecommunication service platform is presented that is able to create, deliver, and manage interactive, multimedia content and services for consumption on three different terminal types. The motivations of service providers for designing converged interactive multimedia services, which are crafted for their individual requirements, are investigated. The overall design of the system is presented with particular emphasis placed on the operational features of each of the sub-systems, the flows of media and metadata through the sub-systems and the formats and protocols required for inter-communication between them. The key features of tools required for creating converged interactive multimedia content for a range of different end-user terminal types are examined. Finally possible enhancements to this system are discussed. This study is of particular interest to those organizations currently conducting trials and commercial launches of DVB-H services because it provides them with an insight of the various additional functions required in the service provisioning platforms to provide fully interactive services to a range of different mobile terminal types

Video codecs and decompressors

Digital video and audio produce very large and unwieldy files. Codecs are used to shrink files and them play back in reduced file size format. This article disusses the advantages, disadvantages and tradeoffs in using codes, and briefly reviews the most commonly used codecspeer-reviewe