New research project: Adaptive Error Measurement, Concealment, and Repair for IPTV
24 November 2007
/ adaptive-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.