Abstract
1 Executive Summary
1.1 Purpose
This report is about IPTV video quality and the quality of the IPTV
experience. To frame the discussion, this report provides three separate but
nested definitions relating to video quality that are of highest relevance to
the business success of an IPTV service provider:
- Video Quality (VQ), which refers to the video content itself.
- Video Quality of Service (V-QoS), which refers to the error-free video
delivery from the operator’s facilities to the customer premises over
the broadband widearea network.
- Quality of Experience (QoE), refers to the overall IPTV user experience,
including application responsiveness, functionality, usability and the service
context that surrounds it. Unlike VQ and V-QoS, which are each subject to
measurement and conformance to specific metrics, QoE is ensured by using a
combination of objective, testable criteria and subjective, anecdotal criteria
that reflect the performance of the entire IPTV delivery ecosystem.
Only by ensuring high levels of all three, can IPTV service providers begin to
capture new subscribers and keep them loyal. Because MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 AVC are
similar technologies, this report includes information for both MPEG-2 and
MPEG-4 AVC operations. However, the emphasis in this report is on MPEG-4 AVC,
since most (if not all) new IPTV systems are forecasted to use MEG-4 AVC from
2007 forward.
1.2 Situation
Telcos are fighting an uphill and increasingly fierce battle against incumbent
competitors, so VQ/V-QoS and QoE are key considerations. To deliver video
services, they must not only engineer their networks more deliberately and
monitor them more carefully than ever before, they also must quickly come up
to speed with unfamiliar IPTV infrastructure, such as the headend, TV-enabling
software and CPE.
Complicating matters is the fact that many crucial IPTV infrastructure and
serviceenabling elements are immature and have yet to be proven in scaled
production deployments, which creates the risk of unexpected problems that
affect VQ and QoE but don’t necessarily have quick fixes. We
specifically make reference to IPTV middleware and interactive television
applications.
1.3 IPTV Observations Relating to Quality
Because the IPTV ecosystem is complex, this report breaks it up into seven
domains, which are identified in Section 3 and discussed in detail in Section
4. The complexity of this ecosystem makes it very expensive to implement. To
minimize capital equipment and software costs at deployment, IPTV operators
assume an oversubscription model - deploying enough equipment to serve under
average conditions with statisticallydetermined peaks, as opposed to being
designed for full-time peak capacity.
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