THE FUTURE OF MULTIMEDIA DISTRIBUTED SYSTEMS

IPTV Frameworks

Oscar Martinez Bonastre, Lucas Lopez and Antonio Peñalver

Operations Research Centre, Language & Computing Unit.Miguel Hernandez University

Avda, Universidad, Elx, Spain

Keywords: Distributed Systems, IPTV, Multimedia.

Abstract: As distributed systems scale up and are deployed into increasingly sensitive settings, demand is rising for a

new generation of communications middleware in support of application-level computing. Thus, knowledge

of distributed systems and communications middleware has become essential in today's computing

environment. Additionally, multimedia distributed systems are confronting a wide range of challenges

associated with limits of the prevailing service oriented architectures and platforms. In this position paper,

authors seek that the future of multimedia distributed systems will pass through new techniques to stream

data at high rates to groups of recipients, e.g., collaboration systems, computer gaming, embedded control

systems and other media delivery systems. In order to be more specific with promising applications for the

future of multimedia distributed systems, authors have selected a hot topic like Internet Protocol Television

(IPTV). Authors present Tele-ed IPTV, i.e., an author’s tool they have developed to distribute multimedia

content to TV sets. This position paper argues that future of multimedia distributed systems will pass

through IPTV frameworks which interconnect systems that previously have been relatively incompatible.

1 INTRODUCTION

A distributed system consists of several resources

that communicate over a network to coordinate the

actions and processes of an application (Coulouris,

G., 2000). Distributed systems techniques have

attracted much interest in recent years due to the

proliferation of the Web and other Internet-based

systems and services. At present, application

development for distributed systems relies more and

more on middleware support through the use of

software frameworks that provide higher-level

abstractions such as distribution of multimedia

objects (Birman, 2005). Few years ago, (Mattern,

2003) predicted that multimedia distributed systems

should support multimedia data streams to

heterogeneous devices, mobile code, user and device

mobility. Then, scalability, quality of service, and

robustness with respect to partial component failures

have become key issues. In this new context dealing

with multimedia distributed systems, authors have

found out evidences in order to believe that one of

most promising and emerging fields for multimedia

distributed systems should pass through a hot topic

like Internet Protocol Television (Alfonsi, B, 2005).

As a result, this position paper argues that the

future of multimedia distributed systems will pass

through Internet Protocol Television (IPTV)

frameworks which interconnect systems that

previously have been relatively incompatible.

The rest of the paper is organized as follows.

Section 2 introduces the field of IPTV with

associated data distribution techniques. Section 3

presents an author´s application which distributes

sucessfully multimedia contents through an IPTV

campus network. Section 4 shows conclusions

dealing with the future field of distributed systems.

2 RELATED WORK WITH IPTV

Over the recent years Internet Protocol Television

(IPTV) has gained popularity among the new

broadband services.

Concretely, IPTV is a somewhat new broadband

service, but it is expected to grow rapidly over the

next few years (Arberg, 2007).

Next, Figure 1 shows the anticipated increase in

traffic over broadband access networks. As depicted,

this increase will largely be driven by IPTV service.

229

Martinez Bonastre O., Lopez L. and Peñalver A. (2008).

THE FUTURE OF MULTIMEDIA DISTRIBUTED SYSTEMS - IPTV Frameworks.

In Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Software and Data Technologies - PL/DPS/KE, pages 229-232

DOI: 10.5220/0001900002290232

 SciTePress

Figure 1: Traffic increase in broadband networks. Source

(Arberg, 2007).

Although IPTV has been mentioned during the

last couple of years, up to date some confusion

exists around the meaning of what is or is not IPTV

(Ellis, 2006). Because of this is a very hot topic

(O’Driscol, 2008), it appears to be impossible to

clearly define ITPV it can actually be much

uncomplicated. From a simple point of view, IPTV

is TV distributed over IP. However, two services

that are often mentioned as being part of the IPTV

concept (Jennehag, 2007). They are: (i) linear TV

distributed by multicast (live-TV) and (ii) Video on

Demand (VoD).

Firstly, live-TV service is the one considered to

be the normal TV service of today, that is, TV-

programs are bundled together in a channel

following a predefined schedule. In the IPTV

deployments over the world at present, live-TV

service is distributed generally by multicast (Minoli ,

2008). In most cases the content is coded using

MPEG-2 and multiplexed into a MPEG-2 TS. It is

often not necessary to re-encode the video and audio

since it they are often delivered to the IPTV playout

location (head end) by either satellite or terrestrial

transmission and are already coded in MPEG-2.

However, since satellite and terrestrial Digital video

transmission techniques often bundle several TV-

channels together into one TS, i.e., it is necessary to

re-multiplex the information associated with one

TV-channel into a new TS. One TV-channel now

resides inside its own MPEG-2 TS and is packetized

into UDP/IP packets and sent to the multicast group.

Secondly, Video on Demand (VoD) is the other

of the two mentioned IPTV services. VoD functions

as a video rental store accessible through the TV-set.

This sounds remarkable, but is actually quite easily

implemented in its more basic forms. Several

technologies exist which can assist the VoD

distribution. Examples of this media distribution are

Content Distribution Networks (Verna, 2002) or

Akamai platform (Akamai, 2008) respectively.

3 NEXT GENERATION OF

DISTRIBUTED SYSTEMS: IPTV

FRAMEWORKS

IPTV is sometimes confused with Internet-TV

which offers low resolution streamed TV content

over the Internet, or even distributed systems such as

youTube (youTube, 2008).

As said before, currently the border between

what can be considered as Internet-TV and IPTV is

not so simple (Ellis, 2006). These have a more TV-

like user interface and in some cases a more

developed and advanced distribution method.

However, these services require the user to

download and install some proprietary software

before the service can be used. In this framework

just arrived, authors argue that the future of

multimedia distributed systems will pass through

Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) frameworks

which interconnect systems that previously have

been relatively incompatible. According to this point

of view, next subsection presents an author’s

application which distributes sucessfully multimedia

contents through an IPTV campus network.

3.1 Case Study: Tele-ed IPTV

Next, Tele-ed IPTV is presented as an IPTV author’s

tool developed with open source completely.

Framework model for Tele-ed IPTV is introduced as

a television-learning (t-learning) service. Concretely,

it provides a design basis for the development of this

IPTV-based system. Due to the lack of space, in this

position paper Tele-ed IPTV modelling is focused

essentially in one of the two services mentioned

before, i.e., live-TV service.

Firstly, the interoperability of Tele-ed IPTV with

other traditional learning distributed systems is

enabled by the introduction of several interfaces

based on TV-set philosophy. To adapt to the limited

display, control and input capability of TV devices,

authors proposed new development methods of

IPTV-Oriented learning resources (Bates, 2003;

Rey-Lopez, 2006). In addition, authors proposed

conversion strategies to Tele-ed IPTV platform for

the vast amount of traditional web-based learning

resources. With this process description, Tele-ed

IPTV based learning system can provide

interactivity function and television-lectures (t-

lectures) distribution to the students.

Secondly, Tele-ed IPTV is based on a system of

access keys which distinguish between different user

profiles (see UML uses cases for student and teacher

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Figure 2: Use Case for Student Role.

Figure 3: Use Case for Teacher Role.

at figure 2 and 3 respectively).

From the student side, Tele-ed IPTV visualizes

subjects which student is enrolled, see figure 2.

Student can be subscribed to assist real-time t-

lectures or even also download past t-lectures to

reinforce educational contents. From the teacher

side, Tele-ed IPTV shows a personalized interface

with matching courses in development allowing

real-time t-lectures transmission or even recording

of new pedagogical elements so constant updating is

possible, see figure 3.

Thirdly, and perhaps the more important

contribution, Tele-Ed IPTV distributes contents to

the network using Internet Protocol Television, i.e.,

IPTV (O’Driscol, 2008). Tele-Ed IPTV offers an

innovative way of distributing t-lectures through

conventional televisions using set-top-box (STB)

with an IP (Internet Protocol) network address and

high-speed broadband technology. Recently there

has been an intensive activity related to the

development of IP multicast (Minoli , 2008, Birman,

2007, Eubanks, 2007). The result of these efforts

promotes IP multicast on IPTV distributed systems

even also with next IP generation (ITU, 2008). Also,

Internet2 is approaching so next European

Educational Framework promotes the use of

technologies, e.g. multicast, which are able to offer

real time education and collaboration to hundreds of

students through distributed systems using TV sets

(Bates, 2008, Arberg, 2007, Alfonsi, 2005). Thus,

Tele-Ed IPTV deals with real time education

requiring one-to-many communication which is

efficiently supported by IP multicast (Kenneth,

1999). By this way multicast reduces the amount of

duplicate traffic and improves the quality of IPTV

distributed applications (Minoli , 2008). On the other

hand, unicast is used whenever they’d request

pedagogical contents on demand for last t-lectures.

From this point of view, Tele-ed IPTV is

implemented using the other service mentioned

before, i.e., Video-On-Demand (VoD). Thus, Tele-

ed works as a Content Distribution Network (Verna,

2002). Figure 4 depicts TV personalized interface

for student side with matching courses in

development allowing real-time t-lectures reception

or even downloading on demand past t-lectures so

constant information is available.

About streaming software, Tele-ed IPV has been

programmed using VideoLAN software (Videolan,

2008) at server side. Also, Tele-ed IPTV distributes

pedagogical contents using MPEG-2 video format.

Figure 4: TV personalized interface. Student side.

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Concretely, Tele-ed IPTV matches different

multicast addresses according to each video content

delivery. Figure 5 shows a simple testbed scenario

where Tele-ed IPTV has been tested successfully.

This figure shows how Tele-ed IPTV source

distributes video contents through a multicast

campus network. Alternatively, receivers are TV

devices which are able to receive this multicast

traffic through their Set-Top-Box (STB).

Figure 5: Testbed scenario for Tele-ed IPTV.

STB (Amino, 2008), is a device that connects to

a TV. Then, an external source of signal (in this

work an Ethernet cable) turns the signal into content

which is then displayed on the TV set. Besides, each

STB has been configured to receive multicast traffic,

i.e., TV channels have been configured with a

multicast address for each Tele-ed IPTV content.

4 CONCLUSIONS

In this position paper, the authors have tried to

present an arguable opinion about a specific issue,

i.e., close future field of multimedia distributed

systems. Therefore, main goal has been to convince

the audience that IPTV framework has been

appeared as a hot topic (Alfonsi, B., 2005, Comms,

2008, O’Driscoll, 2008) to take into account for next

multimedia distributed systems. Authors have tried

to support their argument with evidence to ensure

the validity of their claim. Concretely, they have

presented Tele-ed IPTV as a promising framework

for next generation of multimedia distributed

systems. To conclude, authors maintain that IPTV

frameworks are a challenge task to design

multimedia distributed systems. About work in

progress, authors are configuring Tele-ed IPTV as a

real Content Distribution Network. More to the

point, they maintain that the transition in learning

system design and learning resource plan from

traditional web-based learning platforms to IPTV-

based learning one is not trivial.

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