How to support Internet-based distribution of video on demand to portable devices

The increasing diffusion of mobile computing and of portable devices with wireless connectivity identifies new challenging scenarios for service provisioning. The access from devices with limited heterogeneous capabilities to traditional and novel Internet services requires new infrastructures capable of integrating with the fixed network and of supporting service tailoring/adaptation. The paper presents a mobile agent-based middleware for the distribution of video on demand (VoD) to portable devices. Mobile agents can act as device proxies over the fixed network, can negotiate the proper QoS level and can dynamically tailor VoD flows depending on profiles of terminal characteristics and user preferences. The paper also describes the design and implementation of a motion picture-information service prototype, built on top of the proposed middleware. The prototype shows the feasibility of distributing motion picture trailers ubiquitously even to portable devices with strict constraints on computing power and visualization capabilities, e.g., Palm personal digital assistants hosting the Java KVM/CLDC/MIDP software suite.