On-Demand Service Delivery

Protocols for ad insertion

ANSI/SCTE 35, digital program insertion cueing message for cable ANSI/SCTE 130, digital program insertion advertising systems interfaces

Rack mounted system

All units are rack mounted, though the ordering of the equipment within the racks are not proscribed.

ANSI

American national standards institute

Lower third advert

Appears after five seconds on the screen, usually of OTT type content.

Challenges of Access network

Bandwidth contention.

BSON

Binary script object notation

VOD back office

Brokers the session between the on-demand system, the consumer and the billing system.

CBI

Common billing interface.

Role of on-demand back office

Communicates with content management systems, digital rights management systems, billing systems, streaming systems, catalog servers, etc... It is the nerve center, controlling rules, and directing workflows for storage, scheduling, streaming, session setup, server resources, billing, securing content and reporting consumer on-demand requests.

Challenges of the STB

Communication with middleware and the back office.

CA

Conditional access

Trick mode

Consumer controlling the stream in 3 way conversation with device, back office, and video streamer. When consumer FFW or RWD streamed video, the video streamer may stream a FFW or RWD trick file that approximates the video.

Service delivery requirements

Consumer must be able to select and retrieve movie for playback. Delivery network must have enough band width to stream movie. System must be able to authorize the consumer to view the movie. Consumer must have a device that can decrypt and play back the movie. Delivery network must enable stream control for trick play. System must be able to track usage and bill the consumer.

On-demand systems components

Consumer. Last mile. Streaming system. Back office. Content management. Content distribution. Content creation and packaging.

CDN

Content delivery network.

Subscriber based billing interface

Content is bundled together and sold as part of a monthly subscription, which includes catch up TV and on-demand content library.

Quadrature amplitude modulators

Deliver transport streams to end users in a cable network. Convert and modulate VOD stream onto a RF carrier for delivery.

Back office function - content routing and propagation

Determines where content is most needed in the system and routes to appropriate edge servers.

ANSI/SCTE 130

Digital program insertion advertising systems interfaces. Defines a set of interfaces between logical components of an advanced advertising system designed to support linear, on-demand and DVR delivery platforms.

ANSI/SCTE 35

Digital program insertion cueing message for cable. Enables measurement enhanced applications and ad placement on linear and on-demand content

DSM-CC

Digital storage media command and control

DVB-C

Digital video broadcasting cable standard

Load balancing

Distributing a computing or networking workload across multiple systems to avoid congestion and slow performance.

DASH

Dynamic adaptive streaming over HTTP

EPG

Electronic program guide.

Choose advert

Giving the user the ability to choose and ad before watching a piece of content.

GUI

Graphical user interface

HLS

HTTP live streaming

Memory types

Hard disk drive. Solid state disk. RAM based storage.

HTTP

Hypertext transfer protocol

Video server functions

Ingest content. Store content. Fast access. Steam content. Control.

Challenges of billing system

Integrating and communicating confidential customer information with customers with customer purchased VOD assets.

Challenges of back office

Integrating and communicating with multiple systems, including 3rd party systems.

Challenges of Middleware

Integrating and communicating with multiple systems, including the back office, the consumer device, 3rd party systems that provide the service and digital rights management.

Back office function - subscriber management and billing systems

Interfaces between subscriber management and billing systems to exchange information in regards on on-demand purchases. Communicates by exchanging information in XML documents over HTTP interfaces.

Back office function - on demand catalog and navigation

Interfaces or includes a catalog server for presenting the on-demand menu and navigation for display on consumer devices. Also stores metadata that can be used by a catalog server.

Back office function - advertising interface

Interfaces with advertising applications.

Back office function - conditional access and digital rights management interface

Interfaces with conditional access or digital rights management systems to ensure secure content delivery.

Back office function - system monitoring interface

Interfaces with system monitoring tools.

IETF

Internet engineering task force.

True VOD

Is a two way conversation between the on-demand system and the consumer device.

On-demand content store

Is the content library where video, audio, art and data content is stored and made available for selection. Typically only handling movie content.

System monitoring and reporting

It is easier to track users activities when they are streaming content than when they are browsing a website, as they cannot tell how long a user has browsed a particular page. Streaming video is controlled by sessions, the system can determine things such as average viewing time, when the user goes for break, etc..

JSON

Java script object notation

LSCP

Lightweight streaming control protocol

MPEG21

MPEG group that is working on DRM systems.

Adaptive streaming protocol examples

MS smooth streaming. Apple HTTP live streaming. Adobe HTTP dynamic streaming.

Back office function - reporting interface

Maintain a data warehouse and interfaces with reporting tools to stream success rates, on-demand usage reports, customer accounts and related information.

MCR

Master control room

MDN

Media delivery network.

Secure streaming

Multiple ways to encrypt the content: As video leaves server. At the QAM. On separate encryption device before arriving to QAM. Pre-encrypting before being stored on the video pump or VOD content store.

NIC

Network interface card.

NOC

Network operations center

NGOD

Next generation on-demand

Video pump/streamer

On-demand store/storage combined with video streamer.

Logical system

On-demand systems can contain a wide variety of equipment arranged in a variety of different ways

OTT

Over the top.

Transactional based billing interface

Pay per view and involves users downloading content and paying for it on an ad hoc basis. Can be stand alone or additional service.

NIC teaming

Process of grouping together several physical NICs into one single logical NIC, which can be used fro fault tolerance and transmit load balance.

Ad insertion

Promotes existing or upcoming events and can also be used to generate revenue.

QAM

Quadrature amplitude modulators.

RF

Radio frequency

RTCP

Real time control protocol

RTMP

Real time messaging protocol

RTP

Real time protocol

RTSP

Real time streaming protocol

RAID technology

Redundant array of independent disks.

RAID 0

Requires 2 drives, no redundancy.

RAID 5

Requires 3 to 16 drives, stripes parity and data.

RAID 6

Requires 4 drives, 2 for storing/processing data and 2 for redundancy. Most fault tolerant.

On-demand catalog middleware

STB client to display a VOD catalog from data passed to the consumer device from a middleware server or catalog generator or navigation server that resides in the headend.

Types of billing options

Sand alone system, residing on provider's premise. Cloud based billing systems.

On-demand storage array

Series of arrayed drives with advanced caching abilities and high speed outputs for streaming content.

SAP

Session announcement protocol

SDP

Session description protocol

SIP

Session initiated protocol

On-demand back office is also known as

Session manager, session resource manager or similar term.

SSP

Session setup protocol

Real time streaming protocol

Set up and control single or multiple media sessions that deliver continuous, real time media streams. RTSP controls the stream it does not stream the media.

Back office function - session and resource management

Sets up session between the consumer device and video streamer. Performs resource allocation to optimize bandwidth and reduce latency. May negotiate bandwidth, detects failures and re-routes stream, communicates with consumer device for trick play requests.

SNMP

Simple network management protocol

SOAP

Simple object access protocol

SCTE

Society of cable telecommunications engineers.

DRM requirements

Some kind of digital object, such as film or TV series. Different rules about how the object can be viewed or manipulated. Software and hardware that enforce the rules. End users who consume the digital objects.

Challenges of video server

Storage space. Streaming or downloading the multiple devices.

IP network

Streams video over IP sub-nets directly to IP address and port on the destination consumer device.

MS smooth streaming.

Technology dynamically monitors local bandwidth and optimizes content playback by switching quality in real time. A single stream can be encoded several times at different quality levels to ensure that lower bandwidth fragments are available when required.

Digital rights management

The ability of a service provider to charge for and restrict the use of content.

Fault tolerance

The ability of a system to continue operation even if a component fails.

Encapsulation

There is a multitude of datacomms protocols, each protocol is designed to carry out a specific task, there may be several tasks required for successful data delivery and therefore the administrative information contained in a header may need to be carried inside the payload of another protocol.

Digital storage media command and control

Toolkit to achieve session setup and stream control in VOD implementation. DSM-CC defines connections for session control messages, video streams, video stream control and access to other applications.

UDP

User datagram protocol

Adaptive streaming protocols

Uses HTTP protocol to transport video content in short 2-30 second files or chunks. The server can adapt to change files other bit rates if network conditions change.

Apple HTTP live streaming.

Uses HTTP, fragments the data into files and each file is sent separately, the data blocks can then be reformed as a stream. Does not require MS client and is open source.

Access networks

VOD is typically delivered over cable RF, IP or hybrid networks

Skin advert

Video encapsulated in branding associated with a particular product

Content server

Video pumps/servers in the service of VOD system, are platforms that maintain large video libraries and stream on-demand video content to consumers. May include both video and web servers.

Blank insert

Where a product can be displayed or projected on a blank piece of space in the film, somewhat like product placement.