Prediction-based channel zapping latency reduction techniques for IPTV systems — A survey

Internet Protocol Television - IPTV is a new form of traditional TV, in which TV content is delivered using IP based networks which are managed to provide the required level of quality of service, experience, security, interactivity and reliability. Quality of Service (QoS) and Quality of Experience (QoE) are the two major factors which need to be ensured in order to achieve IPTV customer satisfaction. Channel zapping latency is the major problem which affects QoE for IPTV users. In IPTV systems while switching channels, a delay occurs due to different factors like IGMP Join/Leave latency, video steam encoding and decoding time, network jitter and traffic load. These factors hinder the process of IPTV deployment at large scale and pose scalability issues to IPTV. In order to solve IPTV channel zapping latency problem, a number of approaches have been contributed by different researchers but due to bandwidth limitation and video quality issues, every approach has its own tradeoff. In this paper, we survey the current state-of-art in this thread of research and present the insights behind various approaches that have been proposed in literature to solve the problem of increased channel zapping time. In conclusion, we also point out open research questions and future research areas.