Video Everywhere Through a Scalable IP-Streaming Service Framework

In this paper, we propose a scalable IP-streaming service framework providing the time-shifting and place-shifting capability to achieve the vision of video everywhere. Traditional PVR (personal video recorder) provides the time-shifting viewing experience. However, when mobile TV and PMP (portable media player) are available, the traditional PVR has to be enhanced with the extra place-shifting viewing experience. Hence, several proprietary IPTV streaming techniques such as orb or SONY location free already can deliver a video stream to various kinds of end user terminals through Internet or wireless LAN. In this paper, we propose a distributed, scalable IP-streaming service framework to enhance the current IPTV streaming techniques. Three important issues are addressed in this paper. First, we propose a suitable metadata format that is capable of being used in the service framework second, we discuss how to produce scalable IDTV (interactive digital television) contents that can adapt the display capabilities of diverse terminal devices. Third, we evaluate how to apply the MPGE-4 SVC (scalable video coding) in the service framework.