IPTV is an IP Network-delivered Television. It is the
delivery of television content using signals based on the logical Internet
protocol (IP), rather than through traditional terrestrial, satellite signal,
and cable television formats.
It could consist of anything ranging from Switched digital
video (SDV), Video recording (DVR/PVR/nDVR) and Video-on-demand (VOD),
Interactive TV applications or Targeted (advanced) advertising.
IPTV getting
deployed in the world market
Subscribers want more
choice and control. The New
generation grew up computer/Internet savvy and they want everything to be
connected to their computer, tablets and not just to their television sets. Also it is customized for the customer
– One bill, one provider, integrated services with voice data and video.
Codec, access, server
and CPE technologies are improving .
Customer is getting better quality by the introduction of various codecs
like HEVC, MPEG-4 AVC (H.264) improvements, new xDSL, FTTx, DOCSIS 3.0 access
technologies. Moore’s law of advancement for the processing and memory is also
implemented.
Competition is increasing among service providers .Gone are
those days when we didn’t have internet access. Now we are no longer limited by
access. The service providers are providing the great internet broadband to the
customers. The traditional markets are going away, e.g., VoIP is getting free
and internet costs are getting reduced by miles.
Without going deep into the headend as it is now well known,
I will focus on the transport packets
and routing protocols.
Various Transports
Native IP multicast, MPLS, L2,
optical
SSM: Source-Specific Multicast
(RFC 4604 and 4607) Receivers
subscribe (S, G) channels to receive traffic only from source S sent to group G
,Primarily introduced (by IETF) for IPTV-like services
IP Multicast Endpoints Sources: Encoder, transcoder,
groomer, ad-splicer ,Receivers: Transcoder, groomer, ad-splicer, EQAM, IP STB
IETF standardized Receiver-to-Router Protocols:
IGMPv3 (IPv4) and MLDv2 (IPv6) with (S,G) signaling, Router-to-Router
Protocols: PIM-SSM, IGMPv3 Proxy Routing, Snooping on HAG and L2 devices
Transport Challenges Packet loss, out-of-order
delivery, packet duplication ,(We cannot use TCP for IP multicast)
Efficiency Gains from IPTV in
Cable Delivery
So how is
the user experience changed? What all features have been added which were
previously missing in the traditional cable delivery system? Let us find out:
Variable Bitrate
The variable bitrate is a concept for saving the bandwidth
consumption. Statmuxing provides the least bandwidth to the least popular
channel and providing max. Bandwidth to the most popular service. VBR provides
a bandwidth savings of 40-60%
•IPTV is the
best choice for narrowcast statmuxing and AVC statmuxing
Switched
Video
•Switching is the way to offer unlimited channels
•IPTV
provides built-in switching functionality
Advanced Coding
•AVC provides a bandwidth savings of 50% over MPEG2
•IPTV solves
the problem of slow channel change
QAM Sharing
•Convergence provides further bandwidth savings
•We can
share QAMs for VoD and SDV as well as for video and DOCSIS
So these are the seamless experience that an end user will
get through the IPTV.Since with every technology, comes its own drawbacks as
well. The IPTV needs a good and uninterrupted internet speed.
The Indian market is yet not ready for IPTV but customer are
now looking for traditional TV alternatives owing to their convenience. So a
much advanced and higher efficient service which is known as OTT is in market
trend.
