IPTV Test & Measurement Key
May 22, 2009
To retain customers, service providers must provide a satisfactory quality of digital video QoE for users, says Light Reading. As demand for rich media and TV content continues to grow among consumers, the delivery of digital video at an acceptable quality of experience (QoE) for the user becomes ever more important to service providers, content owners, and equipment vendors whose infrastructure underpins the networks.
IPTV & Digital Video QoE: Test & Measurement Update analyses the technical challenges in measuring a user’s digital video QoE, comparing alternative technologies and summarising work on standardisation. It explains how different approaches are needed at different points in the lifecycle of a digital video service and picks out some of the key trends in this evolving market. This report identifies and compares the differences between vendors, including those with T&M, service assurance, TV, and telecom heritages, and profiles 17 of the leading players in this fragmented and complex market space.
“There is pressure on service providers to ensure that users’ QoE is high enough that they do not want to churn with an alternative provider,” says Danny Dicks, research analyst for Light Reading Insider and co-author of the report. “While a move toward multiple service bundles may be good for subscriber acquisition, retention, and revenues, the complexity of delivering multiple services over a single network is considerable – not least in terms of measuring the QoE.”
The core issue is how to gather, combine, and use data to predict and evaluate QoE at various stages of a service lifecycle, Dicks notes. “Service providers and broadcasters have evolved numerous ways to this, bearing in mind the constraints they face,” he says. “Measuring users’ QoE, though, is a technical challenge: What is needed is to identify the right combination of measurable attributes of the network and application, and the right way