We are happy to announce, that our Project "Optical In-House Broadband Infrastructure" has been awarded with the Innovation and Research Oscar of Carinthia in the category on "Micro Enterprises". The Innovation and Research Award of Carinthia is a yearly event and is the "Oscar" for innovative enterprises. On Saturday, 11/8 the Award has been handed over at the Lakeside Park within the long night of research.

This article covers definitions and requirements of external audio- and video services for home networks. The links mentioned here offer additional information. 

IPTV

is a system where broadband multimedia services (TV, Video, Audio, Text, Images and Data) are delivered using the IP-Protocol. IPTV  is typically supplied by a service provider using a closed network infrastructure.  Depending on the network architecture of the Service Provider, there are two main types of Video Server architectures that can be considered for IPTV deployment, Centralized, and Distributed (P2P). There are two main types of delivering methods:
•    Unicast: is a 1:1 connection between sender and receiver. With unicast the audience can individually assign a starting point of a broadcast or video (is used by Video on Demand (VOD)).
•    Multicast: all clients receives the same data from sender in parallel. The main advantage to unicast is that system load is not rising with the number of participants.
Video content is typically compressed using either a MPEG-2 or a MPEG-4 codec. For PAL or SDTV-quality (Standard-Definition-Television) a bandwidth of in average 2- 6 Mbit/s is needed. For HDTV (High-Definition-Television) in average 6-20 Mbit/s. In future you'll need data rates up to 640 Mbit/s  (UHDTV – Ultra High Definition Television uncompressed). Other quality metrics are available in Alpha Public Paper D1.1. IPTV devices are: PCs, UMTS Mobile phone, Set-Top-Box, digital signage, Kiosksystems, gaming devices. IPTV suppliers are for example: T-Home Entertain, Arcor IPTV, Alice/HanseNet TV, Bluewin or AonTV of Telekom Austria. (see : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPTV , Alpha Public Paper D1.1p).

DVB-IPI

IP over DVB or IP over MPEG implies that Internet Protocol datagrams are transferred over the MPEG transport stream, and are distributed using some digital television system, for example DVB-H, DVB-T, DVB-S or DVB-C. Currently it is the favorized transfer standard for IPTV and is used by the european broadcast companies under public law. Requirements for bandwidth and service quality are the same as for IPTV (see : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_over_DVB, Alpha Public Paper D1.1p).

Internet-TV

or Web-TV is television distributed through the Internet. Internet television allows viewers to choose the show they want to watch from a library of shows. The primary models for Internet television are streaming Internet TV or selectable video on an Internet location, typically a website. The video can also be broadcast with a peer-to-peer network(P2PTV),which doesn't rely on single website's streaming. It differs from IPTV in that guarantees for quality of service are missing. This can result in interferences on transmission and display of content. Internet-TV is based on the assumption that the viewer shall support bandwith, quality metrics of an internet access and availabilty of compatible end devices. For transfer video streams based on streaming technologies are used. Internet-TV receiver is each end device with internet access and video-audio output. Examples of Internet-TV are:
•    ARD-ZDF Mediathek
•    ARTE+7
•    P2P-TV wie Joost oder Zattoo
(see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_television)
The bandwidth and other requirements are the same as for IPTV and are available in Alpha Public Paper D1.1p.

P2P-TV

refers to peer-to-peer (P2P) software applications designed to redistribute video streams in real time on a P2P network; the distributed video streams are typically TV channels from all over the world but may also come from other sources. In a P2PTV system, each user, while downloading a video stream, is simultaneously also uploading that stream to other users, thus contributing to the overall available bandwidth. In a P2P-TV system each participant in the network is therefor as well as receiver and sender. P2P-TV applications are for example:
•    Joost
•    Miro
•    Octoshape
•    PPLive
•    Vuze
•    Zattoo
(see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P2PTV)

Video on Demand (VOD)

The movie is transfered either through internet or a broadband network. On download you differentiate between progressive download and streaming. With Near-Video-on-Demand you can't choose individually the access time of the starting point of the livestream video but only in fixed intervals (e.g. each 15 minutes). If you can choose the access time individually,  True-Video-on-Demand is meant. In case of using a file based method to transmit the video, Push-Video-on-Demand (z.B. YouTube) is meant. Examples of VoD are:
•    Maxdome
•    RTLNow.de
•    T-Home Entertain
•    The History Channel
•    Videoload (auch HD)
•    ZDFMediathek
(see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_on_demand)
Bandwidth is currently between 2 and 128 Mbit/s, in future up to 1 Gbit/s are needed. Further quality requirements are available in Alpha Public Paper D1.1p.

Audio on Demand (AOD)

to download digital audio material from a singe website, webservice or listen to the audio stream directly by using an appropriate software or in combination with hardware. Examples are:
•    Apple iTunes Music Store
•    Musicload.de
•    Napster
•    Sonos
Free of charge examples are on websites of broadcasting services. (see: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio-on-Demand). Bandwidth needed is currently between 5-128 KBit/s. More quality requirements for Audio-on-Demand are available at Alpha Public Paper D1.1p.

Outlook

How to assure all needed bandwidth and quality requirements for this external audio- and video services in homes will be part of next articles.