An IPTV service for academic and research communities

In this paper, the design of an IPTV service developed for the Greek academic and research community, referred to as "grnetTV" service, is presented. The main design requirements were: a) to support a variety of content such as live events, DVB-T channels and pre-recorded material, b) to support academic users located at both multicast enabled academic and research networks and non- multicast networks, e.g., over ADSL lines, c) to provide an access control mechanism, allowing access to part of the content to the academic and research community. The main system requirements were the use of open source tools and compatibility with the most popular browsers and video players. Several Internet TV channels are available by the "grnetTV" service, such as a) live sessions from the Hellenic (Greek) Parliament, b) digital channels (DVB-T) of the ERT S.A, the Hellenic Broadcasting Corporation, c) live events from the Greek Universities Network (GUnet) Media Center, d) recorded material from events organized by the Greek Research Network (GRnet) and universities. The project aims to promote a) content creation by the Greek academic and research institutes, b) the use of multicast technology by the academic and research institutes, c) the use of GRnet's AAI infrastructure. More over, it elaborates on the potential and limitations of open source tools in the development of Internet TV services suitable for an academic and research environment.