Talking Point: IP-based Television at the crossroads

IPTV News : In about 2002-2003 the availability of high speed broadband networking via ADSL combined with optimised MPEG-2 encoding and the reduction in costs brought about by the move to the single-chip solutions for Set-Top-Boxes (STBs) as pioneered by firms such as Amino with the AmiNET103 and AmiNET110 devices made for a step-change in the history of IP-based television service delivery. The first cross-roads had been reached; it became possible to deliver the required bandwidth at good quality and an affordable cost for the first time. IPTV moved from the lab to the customer; from science project to deployable business venture.
In the years since the number of deployments and their scale has exploded as telephone companies exploited the opportunity to roll out video based services in a wide variety of forms - multicast channel zapping, video on demand, pay per view, with many competing user interfaces and methods of delivery over the basic IP channel.

However, IP delivery is now at a very interesting stage - a second crossroads. Ahead of it down one path is High-Definition TV, which is sweeping through the market and seeing high adoption rates where it can be delivered. The latter qualification though is important. Satellite and Cable providers are blessed with enough bandwidth, and tricks like statistical multiplexing of channels that, in combination with the advances in coding efficiency with MPEG-4 AVC, mean that they are now easily able to deliver HD quality TV to the consumer. IP networks based of Fibre (or perhaps other technologies such as VDSL where range is not a problem) can compete effectively against this, and IP STBs such as the advanced AmiNET130 are delivering MPEG-4 AVC HD content at the consumer premises. Yet there remains a substantial copper-based, ADSL broadband network community out there, for whom the data-rates demanded to put several TVs all running full quality 1920x1080i pixel High Definition TV, perhaps with PVR boxes that record one channel while streaming and displaying another, is well out of reach. Typically these networks are able to deliver 8 megabits per second. To fulfil the multi-room, PVR demands of a home with perhaps two HD TVs one can easily show that at least 25 megabits will be demanded, and perhaps more. This effectively means that operators with these networks have some issues ahead.

But, there is another path open, this lies in the direction of open-access Internet delivered content, offered up from web sites - thousands of them. The future here is foretold in the story of music downloads - iTunes, Napster and so forth - and the simple explosive growth that these exhibited. It became practical to stream or download music once modems were replaced with broadband even in its fairly early forms. 256K bits per second is enough to stream excellent quality compressed audio - four times too much for a V90 modem, but easily done with the first broadband systems. As soon as it was possible, the supernova like explosion was triggered. Video is next. Data rates for video are, now, with MPEG-4 AVC and the Microsoft competitor codecs, such that pretty decent results are possible at below 1 megabit. YouTube and its competitors are the first result, with user-generated content, although the quality of much of it is dubious. Ahead lies a world of professionally produced content published via the web directly by a range of content owners, aggregators and individual organisations with specialist interests. Niche sports, hobbies, ethnic programming and a range of things we have not even thought of yet will appear as "web channels" on the net. Initially the consumer has to access this from the PC, but this will migrate into delivery via the TV set - and this requires a very low cost unit with attractive living room quality styling, and a neat, simple user interface. Amino has anticipated this and developed the AmiNET124 and the second generation AmiNET125 products targeting this future.

Back to the crossroads. Is the future to be found along the High-road to HDTV with 25+ Megabit service delivery? Or should we look for it along the low-road....of myriad web-channels and streaming in the 1 to 2 megabit range.

Perhaps the answer is to be found in that famous Scottish ballad:

“You take the high road, and I'll take the low-road..... and I'll be in Scotland before ye!”

Credit to IPTV News