Content Delivery and Reception
Video distribution is one of the main challenges in Internet traffic, as it is one of the most resource demanding content format, not only in terms of bandwidth, but also concerning Quality of Service and Quality of Experience for users.
In ImmersiaTV, we are performing a deep analysis of novel coding and decoding techniques to come up with a technology capable of satisfying the project requirements at 3 levels: in a broadcast production environment, in the main distribution infrastructure, and within the end-user local network, where several devices need to synchronize around the television set.
Insofar, the main approach followed has been the use of CDNs on its two main variables (edge servers and edge networks). HTTP is well adapted to these solutions, despite it was not conceived to deliver video services. This fact brought market to take over other variants, such as HTTP file based streaming and Enhanced Streaming over UDP, but there still isn’t a leading option guiding these process.
There are also challenges in the end-user local network: the content format developed in ImmersiaTV assumes that several devices synchronize around the television set. The distribution of omnidirectional video among synchronized devices in a local network requires taking into account that different devices will have a different performance regarding video processing. This fact implies that within the transmission pipeline additional buffering is required to ensure that all contents are visualized at the same time in all devices, smoothly switching from one to another.
