3.1 IPTV Inhome Solution

The concept of the digital home and what it can mean to the delivery of high-quality entertainment opens the door to a variety of fascinating and challenging technical issues. While applications in the digital home have undeniable appeal (e.g. high-quality video in the form of HDTV, SDTV and DVD, and audio) the delivery of those applications depends on the availability of a high-throughput, high-reliability network that can move throughout the house. Thus, product developers and service providers are now focused on the most effective ways of implementing such a network.

The nature and strength of demand will depend on the quality and reliability of the video and multimedia experience. Unlike the forgiving attitude they have when it comes to Internet traffic (e.g. poor streaming video quality, slow download times and inconsistent service), consumers will demand premium performance from their whole-home network when it comes to the delivery of A/V on such platforms as STBs and PCs.

Inhome networking issues

The kind of home network that will meet the quality-of-experience demands of users will have to support some characteristics, such as HDTV, SDTV and other types of multimedia applications, but also VoIP, gaming, data, audio in a near future. The delivery platform will be a STB, DVR, PC or some other kind of storage device, such as a home media gateway or even a network-attached storage. Premium content will be sourced either from typical pay-TV service provider networks or over-the-top service providers.

Depending on the traffic flow architecture, streams may also be required to traverse the network multiple times. A home network that delivers quality entertainment experience will be one that supports the data rate required by multiple HDTV and SDTV streams and that offers the best packet error rate (PER), plus low jitter and delay for voice and gaming.

The core requirements of a home network include:

• Must adapt to existing services;
• No changes to wiring, splitters or other medium-specific devices;
• Must be a full-mesh, peer-to-peer network to avoid unnecessary network hops;
• Supports various digital rights management schemes;
• Frequency band capacity to handle higher data rates in the future;
• High network bandwidth. This requirement arises from the need to support multiple streams of HD video content. In addition, trick modes such as fast forward and rewind can place even higher demands on individual streams.
• No retransmissions — this is needed to support low-latency requirements;
• Cost of implementation: from a practical perspective, the home network must be in sync with realistic consumer price points;
• Coexistence with other systems: cannot be negatively impacted by the appliances or the home network in the house of a neighbor, and cannot be negatively impacted by other appliances or home networking products being used within the user’s own home.
• Easy of use and installation.

In-home networking goal

A home network would also follow the indicated goals:

• Full coverage; TV in all rooms - Demand for IP based entertainment services such as accessing IPTV and audio content from multiple locations in people’s households is growing at a rapid pace. The ultimate goal of a home network is to provide access to information, such as voice, audio, data, and entertainment services, from any part of the house
• High Definition IPTV streaming support
• Reliability — Home networks must meet PER at below rate, which matches current digital cable programming error rates. PER must constantly be maintained at the MAC layer. Desired PER relies heavily on fully coordinated, collision-free MAC if desired data rates are to be realized. Home networks should not degrade due to other networking devices or appliances such as vacuum cleaners and microwave ovens. This should be true for either subscriber’s home or neighbor’s home. An Digital home enabling technology needs to be reliable.
• QoS — Home networks must handle delay and jitter in a manner acceptable with low values at the services it carries Additionally, the technologies need to be capable of prioritizing IPTV traffic when bandwidth capacities of the underlying physical network are exceeded.
• Bandwidth management — when aggregate content data rate exceeds home networking data rate, prioritization must be used to delay or drop lower priority traffic.
• Interoperability with any device - Other motivating factors includes the ability of a home networking infrastructure to interconnect different types of subsystems together. For example, home security systems are also defined as a network, but instead of interconnecting devices like printers and PCs, in-home security networks connect different types of sensors with a central controller together. Integrating this type of network into an existing PC based home network helps people to expand the functionality of their security system.
• Enable remote management and troubleshooting
• In-home content sharing support.
• Hassle-free-installation. No new wires or similar changes to home infrastructure should be necessary; this should be adhered to within 5 per cent of complete adherence of this requirement—i.e. 95 per cent adherence. A PC should not be required for the subscriber to self-install (recognizing that the subscriber base for this kind of home network will be TV viewers and not necessarily PC users).