Aviva’s IPTV End-to-End total Solution provides telecom operators a convenient one-stop shopping for all the equipment it needs to offer IPTV services.
Contents come in various ways --- live from satellite or off-line from pre-recorded media (Beta tape, DVD, file, etc.). Most of the contents are pre-encoded in MPEG-2 format, which takes about twice the bandwidth and storage space than that in H.264 format. It is more efficient to transmit H.264 contents over the telecom network because most of the broadband access speed is less than 2Mbps.
Aviva’s ET series of MPEG-2 to H.264 transcoder provides the solution to convert MPEG-2 contents into H.264 format. The transcoder also needs to input the contents from various interfaces (SDI for high quality video, ASI for many broadcast equipment, Ethernet for IP streams, A/V for DVD or set-top-box). Aviva’s ET series transcoders can encode contents in H.264 format from A/V (analog) inputs or transcode MPEG-2 contents from SDI, ASI or Ethernet ports. The transcoder outputs the H.264 stream in UDP over IP or TCP over IP packets. It can also store the H.264 stream in a file. The H.264 stream can be used as the source of a live channel and the stored H.264 file can be used as the source of VOD or multicast channel.
The key IPTV services are the real-time multicast service and the on-demand VOD service. The key advantages of Telco IPTV services over the CableTV services are in the interactivity, the large number of real-time multicast channel offerings and the Time-Shifted TV services.
Cable operators have limited frequency spectrum to carry video over the cable network, usually from 50MHz to 860MHz. Before the cable service is shifted to all digital, the spectrum between 50MHz and 550MHz is used to carry about 80 analog programs. Then the remaining 310MHz have to be shared by Digital Broadcast service, VOD service, Data service and potentially VOIP service. Therefore the cable operators is limited to offer many broadcast channels. Each MPEG-2 SD program consumes about 4Mbps and the HD program consumes about 19Mbps. That is another factor to limit more broadcast channels.
Telco operator, on the other hand, can usually offer 200 to 500 channels of multicast programs because each H.264 program consumes half the bandwidth as that of the cable program (usually 1.5M to 2Mbps for SD program and 4M to 6Mbps for HD program). 1Gbps fiber service is enough to carry the 500 channels of programs. Not to mention that there are usually plenty of fibers between the IPTV Head-End and the telco central office to carry the multicast and VOD streams.
Aviva’s Time-Shifted TV, or Network PVR, function helps the telco operators to offer the most attractive IPTV service. Operators can select a number of channels (or all of them) as the Time-Shifted TV channels. Our server will then record all the programs on these channels to the SAN storage 24 hours a day for a number of days, while the programs are being multicasted live. A subscriber can choose to pause the current TV channel from the STB to do other things and come back later to continue the program, or to rewind to review a certain portion of the program again, or to fast-forward to catch up to the current multicast. He/She can also use the on screen EPG (Electronic Program Guide) to search a previous program on any of the channels that he/she has missed to review it just like watch a VOD movie, with the FF/REW/PAUSE control. With this service, a subscriber will never miss any program on any channel while a cable subscriber usually don’t know if he/she can ever review a rerun of the program he/she has missed.
Aviva’s EPG and middleware help subscribers to very easily choose the live TV channel or the VOD movie to watch. The EPG can easily be updated from Aviva’s OSS (Operations Support System) with XML files.
Aviva’s OSS helps the operator to manage the subscribers, offer very flexible subscription package, manage contents, multicast programs, accounting, transaction log, viewing statistics, etc.
Aviva’s SAN products offer from 2TB to hundreds of TB of storage for VOD and Network PVR contents.
Aviva’s VOD server supports from several hundred to several hundred thousand concurrent streams. The VOD system is very scalable and very stable. Aviva offers various hardware platforms from our world-class OEM partners to support large and small deployments. These platforms have been fully integrated with our software and middleware. For example, the VOD server can be a 1U high or 2U high server with integrated RAID storage for a 1,000 room hotel IPTV, or multiple interconnected blade servers where each 7U high blade server supports 10,000 concurrent streams for a large deployment.
Aviva’s Set-Top-Box solution offers two choices--- the MB115 is compact while the MB120 offers Wi-Fi capability. Both STBs support HD and SD H.264, MPEG-2 or WM9 format. Both STBs have been fully integrated with the Aviva Middleware and multiple DRM (Digital Rights Management) vendors such as Verimatrics and SecureMedia. The browser running in both STBs supports DHTML, Java Script and other advanced features.
Usually the live multicast channel programs come from the satellite. Operators use the DVB-S STB to decode one program and feed it to the transcoder from the A/V interface. The solution uses hundreds of DVB-S STBs and many satellite RF signal splitters. The video quality is degraded because the video source is converted from digital to analog and digital again.
Aviva’s solution is to use the satellite receiver (professional level, with ASI output) to receive the RF signal and outputs it to an ASI port. The ASI port carries from 6 to 15 programs in digital MPTS format. The MPTS stream feeds into Aviva’s AD800 ASI-to-IP Demultiplexer. Each AD800 has up to 8 ASI ports. Each 1U high AD800 can demultiplex up to 120 programs and outputs them in multiple SPTS IP streams via a Gigabit Ethernet port. This solution is clean and easy to manage. It saves 6 to 15 times of DVB-S STBs, the management of these STBs, the many A/V signal lines and the many RF signal splitters.
Some telecom operators also want to offer IPTV services over the internet for PC subscribers. The usual video service on the Internet is in WM9 format. This is because that WM9 is very efficient in compressing video/audio in low bandwidth. Besides, Microsoft’s Media Server platform provides many software tools for creating, playing and managing the media. That helps the operators a lot in setting up the whole video services. Aviva’s TX9 Series of MPEG-2 to WM9 transcoder offers the capability to transcode multiple MPEG-2 streams to WM9 streams for live broadcast on Microsoft’s Media Server. Depending on different configuration, models of TX9 can input MPEG-2 streams from AD800 via GbE port, or directly from the Satellite signal with internal DVB-S reception and demultiplexing functions. TX-9 comes in various hardware platforms, which range from 1U for up to 4 real-time transcoding to WM9 or from a 7U high blade server for up to 40 real-time transcoding.
Aviva’s strong engineering team, with extensive deployment experiences, has developed many practical products for the IPTV service deployment. Our End-to-End total solution can help telco operators deploy the IPTV services in a very short time, without the messy integration problems of mixing various hardware and software products from different vendors. We welcome your inquiry and we will help you seamlessly deploy IPTV services.