Who Cares About IPTV Channel Change Speed?
First, if you accept the fact that, to be successful and enjoy decent uptake, IPTV service offerings from Telcos and other service providers will need to be differentiated from the traditional broadcast TV services of cable and satellite providers, one needs to challenge whether fast channel change will measure up to what is provided today. Folks like Microsoft promise improvements of about 50% or so for channel change speed, from 1-2 seconds to “under a second.” Several questions can be raised as to what the exact apples to apples comparison is (compared to cable or other IPTV service platforms) and whether a 500-800ms channel change is even good enough for a quality of experience that might motivate a subscriber to switch from cable.
Assuming there is some significant incremental value for fast channel change, the cost to deliver this value has to be analyzed. All of the information I have seen to date tells me that the incremental cost in terms of D-servers and other equipment to deliver this value is not worth it. IPTV service providers may find that the cost and scalability of this solution simply does not add up, and wou
The final, and I wou
So to conclude, while fast channel change speed is indeed important for improving subscriber quality of experience, differentiating IPTV services with a multitude of content options wou
-Brian Mahony
Tags: iptv microsoft epg channel change telco triple play stb cable
Related Tags: channel change, change speed, service offerings, channel, change, service
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Comments to Who Cares About IPTV Channel Change Speed?
RE: Who Cares About IPTV Channel Change Speed?
Em :
April 16, 2007 1:18 AMThank you, Brian, for the thoughts.
To my mind it is mainly the Middleware system that affects channel change speed. Actually while developing our complete IPTV solution we have never experienced problems with that, i.e. the channel change speed is always enough (less than a second), and this doesn't seem to be a problem at all.
RE: Who Cares About IPTV Channel Change Speed?
Brian Mahonu :
April 17, 2007 2:16 PMEm:
It is not just the middleware that effects channel change speed but the video delivery infrastructure including D-servers, etc. Middleware does control "fast scrolling and search" which is application layer technology. Espial has among the fastest MW performance in the industry, without sacrificing openness and customizability of the UI. My comments were largely in regard to Microsoft's campaign on "fast zapping" which I just don't see to worth the extra expense and likely not the primary method viewers will be selecting their content in the future.
-Brian
RE: Who Cares About IPTV Channel Change Speed?
Alan Weinkrantz :
April 23, 2007 8:46 PMHi...yes, fast channel changing is important. And once you have it, you dont want to go back to the old way. Its not about speed per se. With AT&T U-verse which I have and blog about, there is a less mechanical feel to the process of channel changing.
So...you just gotta see and experience it.
Alan Weinkrantz
http://www.3screens.net
RE: Who Cares About IPTV Channel Change Speed?
Brian Mahony :
April 24, 2007 11:04 AMAlan:
I have heard great things about U-Verse and I don't deny that fast channel change adds alot to the user experience. My point really is it worth the extra cost? And will it be the primary method for navigating and selecting thousands of channels in the future? I think not. I think folks will want more of a Google/Youtube type of search experience to get to their content, and zapping, if cost-effective will be a bonus.
-Brian
RE: Who Cares About IPTV Channel Change Speed?
Em :
April 16, 2007 1:11 AM
Thank you, Brian, for the thoughts.
To my mind it is mainly the Middleware system that affects channel change speed. Actually while developing our complete IPTV solution we have never experienced problems with that, i.e. the channel change speed is always enough (less than a second), and this doesn't seem to be a problem at all.