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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON BROADCASTING, VOL. 55, NO. 2, JUNE 2009 315
An Overview of IPTV Standards DevelopmentJulien Maisonneuve, Muriel Deschanel, Juergen Heiles, Wei Li, Hong Liu, Randy Sharpe, and Yiyan Wu
Abstract—In the last few years, IPTV has emerged as oneof the major distribution and access techniques for broadbandmultimedia services. It is one of the primary growth areas for thetelecommunications industry. However, existing IPTV systemsare generally based on proprietary implementations that do notprovide interoperability. Recently, many international standardbodies have published, or are developing, a series of IPTV relatedstandards.. This paper is an overview of the most significant recentand upcoming IPTV standards.
Index Terms—Broadcast, IPTV, multicast, networks.
I. INTRODUCTION
TELEVISION distribution is one of the largest technology
infrastructures deployed after telephone and electric
power networks. Digital technologies have completely trans-
formed the telephone system creating a much more versatile
and dynamic telecommunications infrastructure and services.
The television distribution is now undergoing a similar digital
revolution. Internet Protocol Television, or IPTV, is one of the
promising techniques which takes a step further by merging
telecommunications and digital television delivery services,
unleashing new, more personal options to consumers, and
fulfilling the promises of a real home broadband multimedia
experience.
By early 2009, there should be more than 25 million IPTV
users in the world. Now it is a good time to take a step back and
look at what has been achieved, what is missing and what the
future might be holding.
The motivation for this IPTV special edition also resides in
the completion of a number of standardization activities that
have taken several years to achieve. It is interesting to take a
look at what standards have to offer, and how they might change
the landscape of IPTV in the years to come.
Manuscript received January 28, 2009; revised February 17, 2009. First pub-lished May 05, 2009; current version published May 22, 2009.
J. Maisonneuve is with the Alcatel-Lucent, 75008 Paris, France (e-mail:[email protected]).
M. Deschanel is with the Microsoft Corporation, Paris, France (e-mail:[email protected]).
J. Heiles is with the Nokia Siemens Networks, 80241 Munich, Germany(e-mail: [email protected]).
IPTV Functional Architecture: Fig. 8 provides an overview
of the IPTV functional architecture. Functions and functional
blocks described in this clause are common to all architectural
approaches. Various IPTV architectural options and more de-
tailed architectural descriptions can be found in [29].
Quality of Experience (QoE) Dimensions: QoE is defined in
[30] as the overall acceptability of an application or service, as
perceived subjectively by the end-user. Quality of Service (QoS)
is defined in [31] as the collective effect of performance which
determines the degree of satisfaction of a user of the service. In
telecommunications, QoS is usually a measure of performance
of the network itself.
Fig. 9 shows factors contributing to QoE.
In upcoming IPTV-GSI events, regular ITU-T working
methods and procedures will apply by means of the work
carried out by the experts of the relevant Study Groups where
global standards will be developed.
Up to now, a total of five IPTV-GSI events have been held.
For example, SG13 (next generation networks) further details
the IPTV architectural design issues including requirements,
network control, service management, traffic classification, etc.
SG16 (multimedia terminals, systems and applications) contin-
uously completes the IPTV terminal device basic models, ser-
vice discovery and consumption mechanisms, multicast func-
tion support, broadcast-centric IPTV terminal middleware, etc.
SG12 is working towards the completion of new recommenda-
tions on IPTV QoE, performance monitoring, etc. The IPTV
GSI events see many new draft recommendations on different
aspects (Questions) in various Study Groups.
E. Open IPTV Forum
The Open IPTV Forum is a pan-industry initiative with the
objective to specify a common and open end-to-end solution for
supplying a variety of IPTV and internet multimedia services
to retail based consumer equipment in the home. The Forum,
which is open to participation from the communications,
entertainment and other relevant industries, will focus on the
development of open standards that will help streamline and
accelerate deployments of IPTV technologies, and maximize
the benefits of IPTV for consumers, network operators, content
providers, service providers, consumer electronics manufac-
turers and home and network infrastructure providers.
The Forum was founded in January 2007 by Ericsson, France
Telecom, Nokia Siemens Networks, Panasonic, Philips, Sam-
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MAISONNEUVE et al.: AN OVERVIEW OF IPTV STANDARDS DEVELOPMENT 325
Fig. 8. IPTV architectural overview.
Fig. 9. QoE dimensions.
sung, Sony and Telecom Italia. While standardization for IPTV
was already going on at that time in several standardization
bodies, the founding members noted that a single specification
that covers all aspects of end-to-end solutions for IPTV and mul-
timedia services delivered both via Managed Networks and the
Open Internet as shown in Fig. 10 was missing. Such a specifi-
cation will ensure the interoperability between consumer equip-
ment and the service offerings, which will make it possible for
the end users to easily access their choice of content and services
offered from multiple service providers. The Forum’s plan is to
extend the specification work with a certification and logo pro-
gram in order to foster interoperability. In the mean time the
Forum membership has increased to over 60 members covering
most parts of the IPTV ecosystem.
An important objective of the Forum is to base its specifica-
tions on existing technologies and open standards as much as
possible. The intention of the Forum is not to create yet another
standardization initiative, but to define a complete delivery so-
lution by profiling existing standards and filling the gaps where
necessary. The Forum will work closely with existing standard-
ization efforts and address those areas which need enhance-
ments by actively contributing the work of the Forum. Currently
the Forum is in the process to setup liaison activities with rele-
vant standardization organizations and fora.
Fig. 10. Open IPTV forum scope.
The Forum’s directions are set by the Steering Group, sup-ported by four ad-hoc groups for working procedures, admin-istration and budget, certification and logo program and stan-dards coordination as shown in Fig. 11. Five working groupsare assigned to drive the Forum’s specification, interoperability,testing, and marketing activities. Requirements specified by theRequirements Working Group are the starting point of any spec-ification work. These requirements are defined based on usercases contributed by the Forum’s members. Based on the re-quirements a functional architecture is defined by the Architec-ture Working Group in order to provide the directions for thetechnical specifications defined by the Solution Working Group.The Solution Working Group has several Task Forces to coverspecific areas of the overall solutions like protocols, codecs,metadata, content protection and application execution environ-ments. Based on the technical specification, the Interoperability& Test Working Group will define test specifications as inputfor the planned certification & logo program. The objective ofthe Marketing Working Group is to communicate and promotethe Forum’s activities and specifications in order to obtain widerrecognition and support in the industry and from end-users.
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326 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON BROADCASTING, VOL. 55, NO. 2, JUNE 2009
Fig. 11. Open IPTV forum organization.
The Forum has just published its technical specification workfor Release 1. Release 1 focuses on basic IPTV services likescheduled content service, content on demand and personalvideo recording. In addition the integration with communi-cation services like chatting and messaging and interactiveapplications are in the focus. For a detailed description ofthe Release 1 services and functions see [16]. The Release 1Requirements [17] and Architecture [18] are already finalizedand publicly available. The technical specifications are ex-pected to be finalized in mid of 2008. In parallel the work onrequirements for Release 2 has already started. It will extendthe Open IPTV Forum specifications with enhanced interactivefunctions, tighter integration with communication services,new advertising features and the support of converged services,which can be accessed on various end devices connected viafixed and mobile access networks. This will allow the end userto consume and control IPTV services not only on the TV, butalso on the PC, mobile phone and PDA at home or on the move.
As an unique approach, the Forum covers IPTV and multi-media services available both via a Managed Network and theOpen Internet. A common User-Network Interface (UNI) willensure that the end user has access to a variety of services of-fered by multiple service providers both over Managed Net-works and the Open Internet. This will make the overall ser-vice offering more attractive and result in a wider availability ofend devices as they will not be dedicated to a specific serviceoffering. It is expected that Open IPTV Forum compliant enddevices will become available for the retail market, giving theend user a choice between different devices and different serviceofferings and as such stimulating the overall IPTV market. Inorder to achieve the goal of a common UNI, but still be open fordifferent business models, the Forum has defined several func-tional entities within the consumer domain as shown in Fig. 12.
The Open IPTV Forum Terminal Function (OITF) providesthe basic functionality to access IPTV services via the Open In-ternet. This includes services discovery, user profile manage-ment, metadata processing, content streaming, content and ser-vice protection, audio and video decoding, service monitoringand a declarative application environment for server based ap-plications and access to web based services. Service discovery,
Fig. 12. Open IPTV forum consumer domain architecture.
metadata, content delivery and A/V codecs will be based onthe DVB IPTV specifications, while the declarative applicationenvironment will be based on CE-HTML as defined by CEA(Consumer Electronics Association). Optionally storage func-tionality for local PVR (Personal Video Recorder) and con-tent download services and DLNA (Digital Living Network Al-liance) Digital Media Player (DMP) and Digital Media Server(DMS) functionality can be included. The latter two allow ac-cess to content from other DLNA devices (DMP functionality)and make Open IPTV Forum services available to other DLNAdevices (DMS functionality) on the residential network.
For managed network services, the IP Multimedia Subsystem(IMS) Gateway (IG) is introduced. The managed network isbased on IMS as defined by 3GPP and ETSI TISPAN. IMSprovides authentication, session management, resource and ad-mission control, billing and user management functions. TheIG contains the IMS client for authentication and session man-agement, and optionally the Universal Integrated Circuit Card(UICC) for IMS Services Identity Module (ISIM) based authen-tication. It provides session management for IPTV services likeCoD and scheduled content offerings, but also the integrationwith IMS based communication services like presence, callerID, chatting and messaging.
In case support for local applications (e.g. advanced inter-active applications, home control) is needed, the ApplicationGateway (AG) has to be used. It allows Java based applicationsto be installed from the network and run locally in the consumerdomain. The AG has the capability to control and intercept themedia stream for the purpose of inserting content generated orstored in the AG into that media stream. It can also interact withthe IG in order to access and control managed network services.
While the OITF (Open IPTV Terminal Function) uses a spe-cific Content and Service Protection (CSP) solution, it will alsobe possible to support alternative CSP solutions via the CSPGateway (CP). The CP terminates the alternative CSP scheme
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MAISONNEUVE et al.: AN OVERVIEW OF IPTV STANDARDS DEVELOPMENT 327
and uses DLNA link protection for secure communication be-tween itself and the OITF and AG.
The Wide Area Network (WAN) gateway (WG) representsthe residential gateway including network attachment and re-mote management functionality.
The functional gateway entities can be implemented in dif-ferent physical devices. The OITF, AG and IG can be for ex-ample part of an IPTV set-top box. Networked TVs with inte-grated IPTV set-top box functionality may implement the OITFfunction only. In this case IG, AG and CP have to be provided byadditional devices (e.g. a residential gateway that already sup-ports IMS/SIP functions for Voice over IP) as needed.
With its objective to define an interoperable end-to-end so-lution both for Managed Networks and the Open Internet, theintegration of communication services and the support of webbased applications and services, the Open IPTV Forum pro-vides a unique approach to foster and widen the IPTV market.Having its work based on already existing specifications and on-going work in other standardization bodies and fora will reducethe time to market and helps to increase the acceptance of theForum’s work.
III. CONCLUSIONS
We have just reviewed the five major IPTV standard or-ganizations and the corresponding specifications that werecompleted in 2008 (some of which are still being extended in2009). It should be noted that in the meantime, another organ-ization—The Object Mobile Alliance (OMA)—has steppedforward to start a new work item on IPTV as a follow up to itswork on Mobile TV (OMA BCAST). There are not only signifi-cant overlaps among existing specifications, developments alsoseem to evolve towards more divergence within IPTV systems.
As before, the upcoming specifications share a lot of commonelements, but fall short of providing interoperability betweenthemselves because they differ in many details. There is thus astrong risk to see new standard-based technology islands emergealongside the existing proprietary islands. Because of the largenumber of alternatives, there is a fair chance that one or severalof those islands will eventually wither and die.
However, there will still be issues of interoperability betweenIPTV systems, and possibly with mobile TV systems. The pur-suit of a single IPTV standard may have failed, but there maystill be room to achieve convergence standards that will bringtogether those technology islands for the purpose of bridgingtheir functionality. This is work that the ETSI MCD TC initia-tive has started to explore.
With so many available standards, vendors and operators willneed to make hard choices, and interoperability may not be pos-sible before another generation of standards is born, or one winsover all the others. Both ways are open, and they may take lesstime than the previous round of exploratory standards. It mightbe a long and tortuous path.
The published standards dealt with basic IPTV scenarios, butthe current standard work comes closer to state-of-the-art de-velopments. In the past years, a significant amount of researchhas been done on IPTV related issues, such as channel zap-ping, QoS/QoE, admission control, and network interconnec-tivity [32]–[38]. Many articles in this Special Issue focus on
more advanced issues that researchers are exploring for the nextgeneration of IPTV systems and services.
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Julien Maisonneuve holds a Ph.D. in computersystems from University of Paris. After workingfor INRIA, he joined Alcatel’s research laboratoriesand led successful projects in fault tolerance andreliability. He represented Alcatel in bodies suchas the IETF and the OMG where he long servedas a board and architecture board member. Morerecently he was a chairman in the architecture groupof the ITU-T IPTV Focus Group and TISPANliaison officer for DVB. He currently is Standard-ization Manager for applications and platforms in
Alcatel-Lucent, representing the company in different standardization bodiesand trade organizations.
Muriel Deschanel Prior to joining Microsoft, Murielworked for TandbergTV and NDS where she wasinvolved in various stages of product developmentfor Digital TV solutions ranging from design engi-neering to project management.
Overall, she has been working on Digital TV for15 years and on IPTV since 2002. Muriel Deschanelgraduated as an electronic engineer from the FrenchGrande Ecole “ENSERG” Grenoble’s National Insti-tute of Electronics and Radio-Electricity; she com-bined her engineering degree with an advanced re-
search degree in data processing.
Juergen Heiles studied electrical engineering at theUniversity of Applied Sciences Rhineland-Palati-nate, Koblenz, Germany and the University ofTennessee, Knoxville, United States.
After graduating he joint Siemens AG, Mu-nich in 1986 to work on satellite communication,SDH/Sonet, Optical Networks and Carrier Ethernet.During that time he was actively involved in thestandardization of SDH, OTN, GMPLS and CarrierEthernet at ETSI, ITU-T, IETF, Optical Internet-working Forum and Metro Ethernet Forum. Since
2005 he is involved in IPTV related standardization activities for Siemens andlater on Nokia Siemens Networks. Currently he leads the common Mobile TVand IPTV standardization activities of Nokia and Nokia Siemens Networks andactively participates in the DVB Project’s IPTV activities and the Open IPTVForum.
Mr. Heiles is representing Nokia Siemens Networks in the Steering Group ofthe Open IPTV Forum and leads the standards coordination ad-hoc group of theForum which is responsible for the interaction with standardization bodies andother fora. He was a co-chair of the ITU IPTV Focus Group QoS and Perfor-mance Aspects working group.
Wei Li is currently a Research Scientist with theCommunications Research Centre (CRC) Canada.He received the B.E. degree from Shandong Uni-versity (China) in 1985, the M.S. degree from theUniversity of Science and Technology of China(China) in 1988, and the Ph.D. degree from theInstutut National des Sciences Appliqués de Rennes(France) in 1996, all in electrical engineering. InOctober 2001, He joined the CRC where his majorfocus is broadband multimedia systems and digitaltelevision broadcasting.
He was with Motorola Canada Software Centre, Montreal, Canada, from Jan-uary 2000 to September 2001, where he conducted R&D in wireless commu-nication networks. From May 1998 to December 1999, he was with EmuliveImaging in Montreal, Canada. Prior to that, he had worked as a researcher atSherbrooke University, Canada from 1997 to 1998.
Dr. Li published more than 40 technical papers. He served as session chairsfor the IEEE International Symposium on Broadband Multimedia Systems andBroadcasting 2006 and 2007. He also served as reviewer for many renownedinternational journals and conferences in the area of broadcasting, multimediacommunication and multimedia processing. He was the IPTV tutorial lecturerin the 56th IEEE Broadcast Symposium and IBC2007, and the BTS IPTV rep-resentative at the ITU-T.
Hong Liu is a research engineer at CommunicationsResearch Centre Canada, Ottawa, Canada. He re-ceived the B.Sc. degree from Nanchang University,Nanchang, China in 1993 and the M.Sc. degree fromUniversity of Ottawa, Ottawa, Canada in 2001. From1993 to 1998, he worked as a lecturer in ElectricalEngineering department of East China Jiao TongUniversity, Nanchang, China. From 2000 to 2001, heworked in Nortel Networks at Ottawa as a softwareengineer and Manitoba Telecom Services Inc at Win-nipeg as a network planner. He has been involved
in the ITU-T IPTV standardization as a representative of the IEEE BTS since2006. His research interests include video processing and communication,network communication, error control coding and DTV system.
Randy Sharpe is a lead technologist with Al-catel-Lucent’s Fixed Access Division ChiefTechnology Officer (CTO) organization in Raleigh,North Carolina. He received a B.S. in electricalengineering from the University of Michigan in1978 and an M.S. in electrical engineering from theMassachusetts Institute of Technology in 1979. Priorto his tenure at Alcatel-Lucent, he developed digitalvideo transmission systems at Bell Labs, and wasa founder and system architect at BroadBand Tech-nologies. He joined Alcatel in 2001, specializing in
broadband access network topics. His current work focus is on IPTV aspectsof broadband access networks. He co-chairs the ATIS IPTV InteroperabilityForum Architecture Committee and is involved in other standards activities.
Yiyan Wu (S’85-M’90-SM’95-F’01) is a PrincipleResearch Scientist of Communications ResearchCentre Canada. His research interests includebroadband multimedia communications, digitalbroadcasting, and communication systems engi-neering. He is an IEEE Fellow, an adjunct professorof Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada. Dr. Wu is amember of the IEEE Broadcast Technology SocietyAdministrative Committee, and a member of theATSC Board of Directors, representing IEEE. He isthe Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON
BROADCASTING. Dr. Wu has more than 200 publications and received manytechnical awards and patents for his contribution to the research and develop-ment of digital broadcasting and broadband multimedia communications.
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