special report quality control
Quality of service will be key to the
future success of IPTV services
throughout the world. Hugo Chung,
CEO of MiraVid, considers the
challenges that lie ahead.
Quality counts
‘W
hat kind of
Data corruption environment, it becomes increasingly
service am I
difficult to ensure that the streams
paying for? The
Data corruption is the most difficult provided for each customer
picture keeps
type of error to detect and can occur configuration are correct.
freezing or
whenever the data is created,
breaking up
The primary
changed, or moved in the system. Missing data
and the audio sounds terrible. I’m not goal of
Failure of any hardware device or
paying another cent ... cancel my
content software bugs can cause data During production, many different off-
subscription. Click.’ This is the best you
corruption at any point in your IPTV line data files are combined to
providers is
can hope for when you deliver
system. A malfunctioning encoder or produce the final programme such as
unmonitored, poor quality content.
to increase
transcoder may produce streams that video, audio, and metadata including
Most of the time, your customers will
viewership -
seem fine at the transport layer, but closed caption, teletext, V-Chip, and
just go away without a reason. acquire new
contains video or audio artifacts. copy guard information. One of the
The primary goal of content
viewers
most common errors is the simple loss
providers is to increase viewership -
Incorrect parameters of one or more of these elements inwhile
acquire new viewers while
one of the stages during the content
maintaining
maintaining existing customers. In
IPTV systems often tailor their output development process.
order to achieve this goal, content
existing
content for many different distribution
providers must be diligently improving
customers.
systems, each with different How to catch these errors?
their reliability and quality of service. In order to
parameters such as resolution, bit-
There are no second chances.
achieve this rate, video and audio compression How can you tell that all the ones and
Consumers will not accept mediocre
standards. With many different zeros that make up a data-stream are
goal, content
service and will not hesitate to the
programme configurations in your IPTV correct? If you have a qualified
jump to another service provider who
providers
will meet their needs. Hence, it is
must be
critical that content providers diligently
continually look for ways to improve
improving
the quality of content delivery if they
their
want to stay in the game.
reliability
The task of ensuring quality of
service is not trivial. Complex
and quality
compression systems and IP delivery
of service.
systems challenge even the best of There are no
today’s engineering resources.
second
Without the proper tools, it is
chances.
impossible to monitor the different
abstraction layers and compression
standards, especially when there is
such a massive volume of data
involved. So what is the best strategy
for ensuring quality with respect to
your IPTV system? To determine this
we must first identify the types of
problems that can occur.
Continued on Page 42.
40 l ibe l march/april 2009 l www.ibeweb.com
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