White Paper. 1 st Edition, February 2013

Transcription

1 White Paper An Introduction to IPTV Service 1 st Edition, February 2013 Page1 This document may neither be reproduced or communicated to a third party without written authorization from AVerMedia

2 Traditionally, audio-visual content has been delivered using a standalone analogue coaxial network. The rapid development of IPTV technologies enables IP networks to deliver the same content along with standard services such as s or internet surfing. IPTV is definitely getting a competitive edge from new capabilities that integrate Internet content, features and functionality into the TV entertainment. What is IPTV? Definition Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) is a system to distribute digital television services through packet-switched network by Internet protocol suites. Until this document completed, there is no any definitive conclusion for a generally accepted definition of IPTV. Various views and arguments could be found from different sources, the following are some examples: From Wikipedia: Internet Protocol television (IPTV) is a system through which television services are delivered using the Internet protocol suite over a packet-switched network such as the Internet, instead of being delivered through traditional terrestrial, satellite signal, and cable television formats. From International Telecommunication Union focus group on IPTV (ITU-T FG IPTV): IPTV is defined as multimedia services such as television/ video/ audio/ text/ graphics/ data delivered over IP based networks managed to provide the required level of quality of service and experience, security, interactivity and reliability. From Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions (ATIS) IPTV Exploratory Group (2005): IPTV is defined as the secure and reliable delivery to subscribers of entertainment video and related services. These services may include, for example, Live TV, Video On Demand (VOD) and Interactive TV (itv). These services are delivered across an access agnostic, packet switched network that employs the IP protocol to transport the audio, video and control signals. In contrast to video over the public Internet, with IPTV deployments, network security and performance are tightly managed to Page2

3 ensure a superior entertainment experience, resulting in a compelling business environment for content providers, advertisers and customers alike. The Origin of IPTV In mid-80 s of last millennium, that several U.S major telecom companies carried out several experiments for transferring video signals over optical fiber and DSL can be treated as the very beginning of the concept of IPTV. The first program broadcasted through internet in the history of television is World News Now produced by American Broadcasting Company ABC in In 1995, the term IPTV was introduced to public first time with the founding of Precept Software by Judith Estrin and Bill Carrico, but the real commercialized IPTV applications has never been born until that the U.K. based company Video Networks put its IPTV-related services on the shelf in Since that, various kinds of IPTV services have been started to emerge and thrive all over the world. Driving Forces of IPTV Market IPTV is definitely a derivative that is derived from and its popularity is tightly linked with the development of broadband internet. That the feasibility and acceptability of delivering television-related service over internet is soaring higher and higher with the great advance of Internet Technologies and Gigabit Transfer Speeds. Therefore, as the number of Internet users worldwide reached 2.27 billion in 2012, the great potential of IPTV could be reasonably expected. Listed below are driving forces pushing the development of IPTV: Rapid Advancement of Video Compression Technologies Video Compression is the core technology for IPTV, through which the high definition video could be delivered over IP network in lower bit-rate; Faster broadband speeds The internet access speeds that ISPs (Internet Service Provider) can offer to their end consumers are increasing and growing explosively. That such increase in broadband Page3

4 speeds makes internet an excellent platform and a channel for IPTV service distribution. Cheaper and better IPTV Industry equipment By related technologies advancing and upgrading, performance and functions of IPTV industry equipment increase but price decrease exponentially, making the market entry threshold of IPTV industry reduced. Furthermore, the improvement in digital compression techniques, such as the development from MPEG-2 to MPEG-4 and H.264 AVC, means that required storage spaces for digital contents and the cost per megabyte of hard disk become lower synchronously, which are also edges for IPTV development. IPTV as a defensive strategy for TELCOS As revenues from plain old telephony service (POTS) and text message declining by high percentage year by year due to challenges and threatens from smart phone App and revenue from broadband access service is facing a bottleneck, and that market newcomers (competitors), such as cable TV s triple play offerings as telecommunication market liberalization and deregulation, Telecommunications service providers (telcos) are eager for a new business model and a revenue source to raise ARPU (Average Revenue Per User), IPTV is viewed as an answer and savor by telos. Online video market springs up Hybrid IPTV is a hybrid service combining conventional cable TV with IP network (private or public). It obviously is an irresistible rising tide in pay television market due to the increasing pressure from users asking their own cable TV providers to offer TV broadcasting service over internet to watch online video contents. The required equipment of Hybrid IPTV is hybrid IPTV set top box which can receives signal from various sources such as terrestrial television broadcasting, satellite television broadcasting and cable television broadcasting. Hybrid IPTV set top box allows users to enjoy various contents from various sources with one single equipment. With hybrid IPTV set top box, user can access many kinds of interactive services from web, such as VOD (video on demand), Videophone, surveillance, online game, Page4

5 ecommerce etc. Most industry forecasts indicate that Hybrid IPTV will be one of driving forces of IPTV. The main issues about IPTV pricing that market players concern are market acceptance and input cost. Pricing strategies of IPTV among market players are totally diverse due to different levels of competition, input cost and operating cost. Pricing diversity also reflexes the competition strategy telos adopted. Generally, in a country or region with higher level of market liberalization, for combating competitive advantages held by existing cable TV provider that already in the telecommunication market, keeping loyalty of its own current POTS customers and reducing churn rate, telos often offers a relatively lower price than exiting market players and various bundle packages and discounts to stimulate demand and gain market share. IPTV Applications Not only expanding the boundary of client-side services for telos and television sector, IPTV has great potential on the aspect of application. Business sectors IPTV could be applied includes television (television broadcasting and Video on demand), telecommunication (IP-based voice service and instant Messaging service) and various of value-added services (home shopping, Interactive advertising and online game). For most of telos who decided to enter into the IPTV market, television broadcasting and Video on Demand are often chosen as the first step. Following are some examples of IPTV applications: Distance Learning Learning or education is always a huge market with great demands. IPTV can help learning or education to be carried out without limitations of time and space; therefore, demands for IPTV from learning and education sector are more than ever, especially government agencies and military units with requirements of neverending on-the-job learning. Besides, the efficiency and flexibility of video lecturing Page5

6 is the forte that IPTV owns and traditional in-classroom oral and blackboard lecture lacks. VOD for Hospitality Industry IPTV system is an ideal web platform for delivering video contents. Video delivering quality and versatility of IPTV are better than conventional VOD systems but with lower maintenance requirements. Video Communications Video Communications is an excellent bi-directional communication and messaging tool for public sector and private sector. Applications of video communications include video conference, product demo, speech, workshop or seminar etc. Digital Signage Digital Signage is a whole-new kind of electronic display that conveys information and messages. The displays of Digital Signage - LCD or plasma screens, LED boards, projection screens - can be installed many public or private premises such as outlet or office building. With IPTV system, Digital Signage could be installed numerously and widely and address various contents based on regional, spatial, sequential and other factors. IPTV Architecture The basic concept of IPTV, no matter commercial or enterprise applications, is that conveying Video/Audio from head-end to client through managed IP. Following are a simple explanation for main elements: Page6

7 IPTV Architecture Content Content source could be from content providers through terrestrial and satellite broadcasting signal, video capture card or others, analogue and digital data are both Page7

8 included. Every source could generate latency which is the main factor affecting the broadcasting quality. Encoder/Streaming Server A video encoder is one device, circuit, transducer, software program or algorithm that compresses video content from one format or code to another for the purposes to transmit via IP network. Encoders could be categorized into hardware encoding or software encoding. The advantage of hardware encoder is its independent ability from PC CPU or RAM, but the limitations on output formats of most chipsets might cause the abnormalities during playback or increase the difficulties in product upgrades. On the other hand, the advantages of software encoder are greater flexibility and various output formats, and decrease in the difficulties in product upgrades. The drawback is that consume more CPU or RAM during compression process and algorithm results in different performance. The so-called streaming technologies refer to transferring media data in segments via network after digitizing, compressing and encoding the raw analog media data. Users could play this media via specific players (such as VLC, Flash...) as soon as the players start to receive, decompress and decode the media data instead of waiting for the complete downloads. DRM System DRM - Digital Rights Management is a mechanism for protecting digital contents from tampering, unauthorized copied and duplicated by encryption and embedded tag, and also a part of encoding process. DRM technologies allow content publishers to apply their own access policies on content, like restrictions on number, time and date of copying, viewing and transferring...etc. VOD Servers VOD, short for Video on Demand, is a system which allows users to select and watch video content on demand. Once content is selected to be played by a subscriber, VOD system transfers the content through video streaming technologies. Various playing functions are available to users, such as play, pause, fast forward, fast rewind, slow forward, slow rewind, last/next frame. VOD system generally transfers content Page8

9 to subscriber by unicasting. The transferring quality in the particular tine point is affected by compression rate, bitrate and bandwidth. Application Servers Application Servers installed are various by IPTV providers. Generally, Application Servers consists of user management, Electronic Program Guide (EPG), Conditional Access System (CAS) and DRM etc. Billing System Billing System manages subscriber-related information, including name, address, credit card number, subscribe date, subscribe details and authorized contents etc. Edge Router An edge router is a device that routes data packets between one or more local area networks (LANs) and an ATM backbone network, whether a campus network or a wide area network (WAN),and verifies and filters data. STB STB, short for set-top box, is an appliance which has a built-in tuner and connects to TV set to decode and convert received signals and through which to transfer decoded signals received to TV set. Base on signal sources, there are terrestrial signal STB, satellite signal, cable STB and IP STB. By the population of IPTV recently, STB is used as a bridge between input source and TV set. STB, particular the IP STB combines with many functions - such as VOD, PVR (time-shifting included), video telephony, surveillance, gaming, shopping - into so called Hybrid STB. IPTV Transmission Protocol IPTV covers both live TV (multicasting) as well as stored video (video-on-demand, or VoD). The playback of IPTV requires an IP connected device, typically a personal computer or smart phone, or tablet, or game-console, or the traditional set-top box connected to a TV. Video content is typically compressed using either a MPEG-2 or a MPEG-4 codec and then sent in an MPEG transport stream delivered via IP multicast in case of live TV or via IP unicast in case of video on demand. IP multicast is a method in Page9

10 which information can be sent to multiple computers at the same time. The H.264 (MPEG-4) codec is increasingly used to replace the older MPEG-2 codec. In standards-based IPTV systems, the primary underlying protocols used are: Unicast Unicast is a kind of transmission that data is sent from a single source to a single network destination identified by a unique address. Data exchange and transmission are carried out between any two linked IP devices; there is no any other third one. Website browsing is a typical example Client-end PC requests web pages to web server and web server delivers web pages on that request to that client-end PC accordingly but any other client-end PCs. If the same web page is requested by another client-end PC, web serve replicates the same data of the requested web page to it. VOD application of IPTV is based on this principle. Content and services delivered by unicast are vulnerable to bandwidth, which means that, for example, if there are 1,000 clients accessing the same channel of a VOD system simultaneously by 5 Mbps stream, the bandwidth consumption in that VOD will be huge. The figure below is an example of Unicast architecture. Diagram-Unicast Page10

11 Multicast Multicast, mainly adopted by line TV application, is the process of a single source sending data or information to multiple destinations simultaneously. Compare to Unicast, the bandwidth consumption of Multicast is quite lesser, which could save internet bandwidth and reduce the possibilities of internet traffic jams and free up the workload for source-end servers. Multicast-based line-tv delivers data to multiple users unidirectionally at the same time without and information feedback from client-end users. Therefore, although Multicast can save bandwidth consumption, but there is not any reliability mechanism - so lost packets stay lost. Moreover, IGMP-supported equipment is required for a Multicast to manage multicast data and establish multicast group memberships. Diagram-Multicast IGMP The Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP) is a communications protocol used by hosts and adjacent routers on IP networks to establish multicast group memberships. IGMP is an integral part of IP multicast. IGMP operates between the client computer and a local multicast router. Switches featuring IGMP snooping derive useful information by observing these IGMP transactions. Protocol Independent Multicast (PIM) is then used between the local and remote multicast Page11

12 routers, to direct multicast traffic from the multicast server to many multicast clients. A multicast-based system is unable to reduce bandwidth consumption unless all router elements from source-end to client-end are IGMP supported. AVerCaster Contribution to the Success of IPTV AVerCaster product line solutions represent AVerMedia s more than 23 years of expertise and 200 more patents in video and related technology in enterprise applications. High flexibility and compatibility makes integration and applications easy for whoever is looking for live TV/Video streaming solutions. The user-friendly webbased operation interface AVerCaster Streaming Service Management requires no extra expense for engineers from initial setup to long-term maintenance. Fully Industry Standards Compatible AVerCaster product line solutions supports Multicast and Unicast transfer modes and various current transmission Protocols. For input interface, DVB-T(75Ω TV antenna IEC Type), DVB-S/S2(free to air),analog TV, Composite, S-Video, Component, HDMI, SDI, ASI are all supported. Furthermore, transport stream (TS) data over internet protocol (IP) is also available. Single-input and multiple-output (SIMO) AVerCaster product line solutions features Single-input and multiple-output (SIMO), not only all content sources under one transport stream can be configured, single content sources can also be configured individual by various profiles according to internet operating requirements, bandwidth limitations and business conditions. Flexibility With multi profiles inside, AVerCaster product line solutions features with various encoding method and rich configuration options such as resolution, level, key frame, Visual Optimization, audio quality..ect. AVerCaster product line solutions also allow administrator to manage user-added profile. Back-up Mechanism AVerCaster product line solutions has built-in back-up feature through which signals Page12

13 could be switched automatically according to sequences and configurations when unexpected errors occur to maintain the best content viewing experience and switch back to the original signal source as errors eliminated. This feature allow content provider to realize the maximum system stability with minimum cost. Easy Management That AVerCaster product line solutions adopts user-friendly and intuitive web-based manage interface allows staff without technical background can also be the administrator without any pressure. AVerCaster product line solutions also allow facility owners to show its own business logo and trade mark to make CIS better. Page13