IPTV: Delivering TV Services over IP Networks

This chapter explores the challenges that hinder Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) delivery networks and the current research directions that are looking at resolving these challenges in light of content characteristics. To make IPTV a popular and a standard platform worldwide, standardisations are conducted. IPTV standardisation aims to achieve the following purposes: interoperability, investment confidence and cost reduction. The general IPTV architecture explains the different shareholders of IPTV and the relationships among them. This chapter depicts the IPTV architecture and the involved domains. The IPTV delivery network has been witnessing several developments starting from centralised architecture, which delivers content using a single main server. The chapter further focuses to formulate and evaluate the load status of IPTV contents aiming at building content‐aware IPTV delivery networks. Modelling the status of content according to the characteristics of IPTV content is very important in designing IPTV delivery networks.