A customizable open-source framework for measuring and equalizing e2e delays in shared video watching

Low-latency and media sync are essential requirements to enable interactive multi-party services, such as Social TV. In this work, we present an open-source and customizable framework that allows measuring end-to-end (e2e) video delays and provides support for different type

Impact of Social Media on TV Content Consumption: New Market Strategies, Scenarios and Trends

The mass adoption of Social Media together with the proliferation and widely usage of multi-connected companion devices have tremendously transformed the TV/video consumption paradigm, opening the door to a new range of possibilities. This Special Issue has aimed at analyzing, from different point of views, the impact of Social Media and social interaction tools on the TV/video consumption area. The targeted topics of this Special Issue and a general overview of the accepted articles are provided in this Guest Editorial

Wersync: A WEB-BASED PLATFORM FOR DISTRIBUTED MEDIA SYNCHRONIZATION AND SOCIAL INTERACTION

This paper presents Wersync, which is an adaptive and accurate web-based platform that enables distributed media synchronization and social interaction across remote users. By using Wersync, users can create or join on-going sessions for concurrently consuming the same media content with other remote users in a synchronized manner. Besides, social interaction is provided by sharing the navigation control commands and by integrating synchronized text chat channels. Additionally, two social presence mechanisms have been added to stimulate the participation of external users in on-going sessions on Wersync. By exclusively relying on standard web-based technologies, this platform can guarantee cross-network, cross-platform and crossdevice support, which is a key point in the current heterogeneous media delivery ecosystem

Review of Media Sync Reference Models: Advances and Open Issues

The advances on multimedia systems have brought new challenges and requirements for media sync. Over the years, many media sync solutions have been devised. Due to this variety, several studies have surveyed the existing solutions and proposed classification schemes or reference models for media sync. This paper claims the relevance of media sync reference models to systematically structure and synthesize this research area. Accordingly, a review of the existing reference models is provided, by examining the involved features, components and layers in each one of them. Likewise, some inconsistencies, open issues and missing components in existing reference models have been identified. Accordingly, this study reflects the need for a new modular and extensible theoretical framework or reference model to efficiently comprehend the overall media sync research area

Plataforma Web 2.0 para la Sincronización Distribuida de Contenidos Multimedia e Interacción Social

Shared media experiences between geographically distributed users are gaining momentum. Relevant examples are Social TV, synchronous e-learning and multi-player online games. This paper presents a first release of Wersync, an adaptive web-based platform that provides distributed media synchronization and social interaction (via shared navigation control commands and text chat channels) across remote users. By using Wersync, users can create or join on-going sessions for concurrently consuming the same media content with other remote users in a synchronized manner. Additionally, Wersync provides two social presence mechanisms to encourage the participation of external users in on-going sessions and two privacy mechanisms. Wersync has been developed by exclusively relying on standard web-based technologies, which ensures cross-network, cross-platform and cross-device support. The evaluation results and a link to a demo video prove the satisfactory performance of Wersync, and its functionalities, respectively

Impacto de Parámetros de QoS en Aspectos de QoE: Análisis desde el Punto de Vista de la Sincronización Multimedia

La sincronización multimedia ha sido un área de investigación clave desde los inicios de los sistemas multimedia. En este artículo se ofrecen una visión general y un análisis sobre el impacto de varios parámetros de QoS en diferentes aspectos de la QoE, desde el punto de vista de la sincronización multimedia. En primer lugar, se presentan los diferentes tipos de sincronización multimedia y su relevancia para garantizar una QoE satisfactoria. En segundo lugar, se muestra que la magnitud de los retardos y su variabilidad en las redes actuales es bastante superior a los umbrales permisibles por los usuarios en diferentes tipos y ejemplos de sincronización multimedia, reflejando así su necesidad. En tercer lugar, se describe el impacto del ancho de banda y la tasa de pérdidas sobre la sincronización multimedia. Por último, se argumenta la influencia del uso de diferentes alternativas para conseguir la sincronización multimedia sobre varios factores de QoS y de QoE