Is LTE capable of enabling new TV experience?
By : BP Tiwari
When I first started observing people’s relationships and routines with television, things were rather straightforward: some people had DVRs while others still used VHS, some downloaded movies from file sharing sites while others bought pirated DVDS or rented from a local shop, some had TV on 24/7 while others consciously limited TV. The lines between TV, PC and mobile phones were rather firmly set with particular types of activities and content adhering to each device, content not typically shifting screens and communication between or among them infrequent or requiring a particular level of technical know-how. Today, as more people adopt new internet-enabled devices and services, people’s daily media consumption is extending far beyond the reach of the stationary, shared television sets offering TV channels.
Often people ask me, what is the base line bandwidth requirement to enable Internet TV? The amount of data rate required is dependent on number of factors especially type of video format, frames per second, resolution etc. On high level a standard definition based TV in MPEG 4 format will require at least 2 Mbps or a HD quality video will require an 8 mbps sustained connection.
And Video does not stop here ….
The web has completely changed the aspects with introduction of laptops and now with the introduction with Smartphone’s. But even, today the web has very limited adoption in the premier entertainments devices in your living room, the TV. So we stuck there, there are two completely different world. The one world has all your favorite web videos and your favorite websites, while other has the traditional TV experience.
Ways to provide video service over the 4G Networks
Unicast : Using a unicast services flow based on user request ( and attaching a QoS profile to the services class. ) . Signaling is carried out on every service flow while creating, change or deletion over air interface between BTS and MS. The required air resources increase in proportion with number of users.
Broadcast mode: The broadcast mode is a unidirectional point-to-multipoint transmission of multimedia data (e.g. text, audio, picture, video) from a single source entity to all users in a broadcast service area. The broadcast mode is intended to efficiently use radio/network resources e.g. data is transmitted over a common radio channel. Data is transmitted in the broadcast service area as defined by the network (Home environment).
Multicast mode: The multicast mode allows the unidirectional point-to-multipoint transmission of multimedia data (e.g. text, audio, picture, video) from a single source point to a multicast group in a multicast service area. The multicast mode is intended to efficiently use radio/network resources e.g. data is transmitted over a common radio channel. Data is transmitted in the multicast service area as defined by the network (Home environment). In the multicast mode there is the possibility for the network to selectively transmit to cells within the multicast service area which contain members of a multicast group.
However, whether to implement MBMS or to use Unicast Video for TV services should be carefully studied. I have personally not seen any MBMS commercial network case study yet, and have not heard any network with a committed implementation plan, either. Unicast-based mobile IPTV has commercial business cases and considered to be a more practical solution.
The unicast based IPTV is expected to be more widely accepted and has immediate takers. The new initiative by Google and their partners like sony,Logitech and intel called Google TV is testimonial to the trend. Mobile broadband networks like LTE and WiMAX will accelerate the adoption on video over internet. It’s a fascinating time in TV land. According to Google, more than 4 billion people are TV users. That’s higher than cell phone and computer users combined. Americans watch TV about 5 hours a day, and spend many more hours on the Internet – often doing both at the same time.And my guess is, we will see 10X more innovation on the TV in the next five years versus the past decade.
Watch this video featuring Google, Intel, Sony, best buy, Logitech, adobe and dish network CEOs talking about the new internet TV which will be released commercially this fall.
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