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New research project: Adaptive Error Measurement, Concealment, and Repair for IPTV

Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) systems are a rapidly growing converged network service. These systems replace the traditional “set-top box”, receiving broadcast or cable television, with a networked IP-centric device, to which video is streamed live or on demand. The user experience initially follows that of traditional television, but it is expected that additional interactive services will be offered over time, as the potential of the underlying converged network architecture is exploited. Key to this, however, is ensuring the television service provided matches – or exceeds – that of traditional broadcast television. Converged networks suffer from different problems than do pure data networks and dedicated real-time transmission networks, so there is a need for new algorithms and protocol mechanisms to monitor reception quality and diagnose network problems. This project aims to develop such new algorithms and protocols.

Specifically, the key areas we will address are algorithms for correlation and analysis of reception quality reports, methods of efficiently reporting reception quality, and media stream repair techniques. Building on existing standards, we will develop both per- and cross-stream analysis algorithms to locate and diagnose problems with media delivery, design new reception quality report transport, summarization, and aggregation protocols, and use these to improve quality and manageability of IPTV systems.

This project is a collaboration between Helsinki University of Technology and the University of Glasgow. Funding is provided by Cisco Systems.