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GUEST EDITORIAL
IPTV SYSTEMS, STANDARDS, AND ARCHITECTURES: PART I
Steven Wright
Simon Jones
B
Chae Sub Lee
roadcast television services are becoming increasingly digitized and interactive, and advances in video compression technology are reducing bandwidth requirements. Network access bandwidth of widely available consumer services is increasing. The convergence of these trends has fueled increasing interest in delivery of TV services via IP networks, known as IPTV. A number of operators and vendors are currently working on IPTV standardization efforts (e.g., ATIS/IIF, ITU-T FG IPTV, ETSI TISPAN, DVB [1]) to support wider availability and interoperability of IPTV as a secure reliable managed service. While the technologies for packet video have been explored for some time, a number of issues remain in the design, development, and deployment of commercially viable IPTV services. These include standardization of architectural elements, content protection, and service aspects including portability, scalability, interoperability, performance, and accounting. The goal of this Feature Topic is to provide a forum for sharing knowledge on recent advances in IPTV services, related research, design and deployment challenges, and possible approaches for future evolution of the services. Due to the number of high-quality papers received and magazine space limitations, this Feature Topic will be published over multiple issues. “Standardization activities in ITU on QoS assessment of IPTV” by Takahashi, Hands, and Barriac considers IPTV services from the perspective of the user’s experience. This work contemplates various approaches to measurement of the quality of the user’s experience. In particular, the authors review current standardization efforts focusing on the work at ITU-T and the Video Quality Experts Group. Hei, Liu, and Ross, in “IPTV over P2P Streaming Networks: The Mesh-Pull Approach,” provide an overview of the architectural implications of supporting IPTV services using peer-to-peer technology as a distribution mechanism. Their focus is on the design trade-offs within the peer-to-peer distribution mechanism. While peer-to-peer distribution protocols have been available for some time, their applicability to IPTV, especially large-scale streaming services, remains an open question for the industry [2, 3]. “Increasing User Perceived Quality for IPTV Services,” by DeVleeshauwer, Degrande, Laevens, and Sharpe, reviews some of the challenges in delivery of high-quality IPTV services via a packet network. The article considers the trade-off between FEC and ARQ error correction, and the implications in network and terminal equipment for improving user perceived quality. Underlying any IPTV service is a physical infrastructure. The article by Han, Lisle, and Nehib, “IPTV Transport Architecture Alternatives and Economic Considerations,” considers some alternatives for this, particularly the access portion of the network.
IEEE Communications Magazine • February 2008
The Guest Editors would like to thank all authors who submitted manuscripts, without whom there would be no articles. We would also like to express our gratitude to the reviewers who volunteered their time to ensure the quality of the articles by providing thoughtful comments and critiques. Finally, we would like to thank the Editor-in-Chief and production staff for their support.
REFERENCES [1] C-S. Lee, “IPTV over Next Generation Networks in ITU-T,” Proc. IEEE/IFIP 2nd Int’l. Wksp. Broadband Convergence Networks, Munich, Germany, May 2007. [2] A. Sentinelli et al., “Will IPTV Ride the Peer-to-Peer Stream?” IEEE Commun. Mag., June 2007, pp 86–92. [3] Y. Huang et al., “When Is P2P technology beneficial to IPTV Services?,” Proc. ACM 17th Int’l. Wksp. Network and Op. Sys. Support for Digital Audio and Video, Urbana-Champaign, IL, June 2007.
BIOGRAPHIES STEVEN WRIGHT [SM] (
[email protected]) has worked for more than 25 years in the communications industry, in Australia, the United Kingdom, Belgium, and the United States, with companies such as Plessey, GTE, Alcatel, Fujitsu, BellSouth, and currently AT&T. He holds a B.Eng.(electrical) degree from the University of Southern Queensland, Australia, an M.B.A (marketing) from Arizona State University, an M.S.(computer information systems) from Boston University, and a Ph.D. (computer engineering) from North Carolina State University. He has contributed to ANSI T1, ATM Forum, ATIS IIF, ITU-T IPTV-FG and IETF. He was Co-Chair of the Multimedia Technologies and Services Symposium at ICC ’04, and has been a TPC member for more than 10 other IEEE conferences and symposia. He has published more than 15 refereed articles in conferences, two book chapters, and five journal papers, and holds three U.S. patents. He has also been the editor of three specifications developed by the ATM Forum. He is currently the Co-Chair of the Architecture Task Force of the ATIS IPTV Interoperability Forum. SIMON JONES (
[email protected]) has worked on interactive television and content on demand for over 15 years with companies in the United Kingdom such as BT and BSkyB. He currently works for BT as chief IPTV architect, with responsibility for the architecture and standards of BT Vision, BT’s IPTV service. He holds a B.Sc. (electronic engineering) degree from the University of Bath, a Ph.D. (electronic systems engineering) degree from the University of Essex, and lectured in the Department of Electronic Systems Engineering, University of Essex. He is actively involved in IPTV standardization. He was a Vice-Chair of the ITU-T’s Focus Group on IPTV and also represents BT at the Digital TV Group, the industry association for digital TV in the United Kingdom. CHAE SUB LEE (
[email protected]) has worked in telecoms standardization for over 20 years. He has been actively involved in regional standards in the area of network standards. He has been involved in ITU-T standards development for the ISDN, GII, IP-based networks, and NGN. He was mainly involved in Study Group XVIII (currently SG13) as rapporteur on architecture and interworking. He is a vice-chairman of ITU-T SG13 and Chairman of WP2/13 on architectural study. He is also a Vice-Chair of ITU-T IPTV Focus Group since July 2006. He shared his role as a Chair of NGN Focus Group from June 2004 till November 2005. After a career of 20 years with KT as a senior researching engineer, he was an invited research staff member at ETRI.
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