ip coverstory_cover story 07/03/2014 08:34 Page 1
s someone who has been
working in IPTV for a long
time, is active in the
leadership of OIPF as a
Board member and a Working Group
chair, and more recently as a member
of HbbTV, Rob Koenen, senior
business consultant at TNO, is well
placed to comment on standardisation
activities.
“I’ve spent the last two years getting
(standardised) STB-less IPTV off the ground,
and I think we are getting close. At TNO, we
work with a large number of parties (CE
makers and technology providers) in the
IPTV ecosystem to get this done, setting
A
standards where needed (e.g., in DVB and
OIPF). We work directly for a number of
IPTV operators across Europe, who can’t wait
for this to become a vailable. In our view, IP
should be just one more well-defined input to
the TV set, like cable, terrestrial, or satellite.”
“IPTV has grown enormously over the last
few years. Historically there are quite a few
IPTV standards, but none of them really got
implemented on a large scale. I believe this is
about to change. In our work on STB-less
IPTV, it quickly became clear that standards
are required to make this fly. The opportunity
to enable this now comes from the
being upgraded to HTML5; this is a great
development as it allows cross-platform
development based on standards.
l Codecs (MPEG/ITU AVC and
supporting Audio codecs ; MPEG/ITU
HEVC to follow soon);
l Delivery formats: MPEG DASH
(fragmented MP4) for on-demand; MPEG2 Single Program Transport Stream for
multicast;
l Conditional Access: CA can be
supported through CI+ in TV sets and
STBs, and for true DRM we’re seeing
standardised encryption and interfaces to
IPTV networks have
grown from small-scale
deployments to
nationwide services
coping with the demands
of a range of managed and
OTT services. Subscribers
also expect portability and
availability of their
content across a range of
devices, putting pressure
on interoperability and
Setting the Standard
quality. Colin Mann
reports on the trade
groupings working to
ensure a smooth
consumer experience and
assesses the challenges
and opportunities moving
forward.
appearance of a number of relevant
specifications:
l The DVB CI+ 1.4 specification, which
extends the Common Interface with
support for IP streams, including IP
multicast;
l OIPF specs which specify end-to-end
protocols for IPTV, including browser,
codecs, delivery, and other protocols;
l And HbbTV specs which specify a rich
ecosystem for broadcaster-delivered apps
and content on Connected TV sets,
building on OIPF specs and also
specifying things like codecs and
delivery. It’s the HbbTV stack
that’s in virtually every TV set,
certainly in Europe – this is a
significant source of technology
convergence in connected TVs.
We’re also seeing a lot of
convergence in key technologies:
“Standards are
defined with
specific goals,
QoS/QoE often
isn’t at the top of
the list.”
Ronen Segal,
Comigo
14 IP television
l Browser environment: OIPF’s
DAE as used by HbbTV, initially
based on CE-HTML but now
proprietary DRM systems, notably for
MPEG DASH. HbbTV has played a very
important role here. Some countries have
even gone so far as specifying one or two
DRM Systems for use with HbbTV, e.g.
France and the Netherlands. This makes it
easier to harmonise content security
across devices.”
According to Koenen, all of this can be
leveraged to deliver IPTV straight to TV sets,
or standardised STBs. “We showed an STBless proof of concept at IBC last year on the
DVB booth, in which we used a Philips TV
with a SmarDTV Conditional Access Module
and an Accenture App to demonstrate what
the user experience will look like (i.e., an
operator experience on a standard TV set that
automatically launches after inserting the
operator-provided CAM).”
INTEROPERABILITY. As to what extent
standards can guarantee interoperability and
QoS/QoE, he says the standards are certainly
in place to provide the required
interoperability, “or perhaps I should say