IPTV: Super Headends And High Expectations

By Peter J. Brown

The rapid emergence of Internet Protocol TV (IPTV) solutions has created quite a stir in satellite circles. The timing is remarkable, as IPTV arrives just as the next generation of dazzling display technologies, rich media-enabled mobile and portable content delivery options and easily implemented interactive elements are becoming available. IPTV will propel this dynamic, on-demand-driven and highly personalized entertainment market to new heights.

IPTV encompasses an expansive lineup, unlike any-thing seen before, says Microsoft TV spokesman Ed Graczyk. Linear programming, video on demand, content recorded on a digital video recorder and even content like games are all treated the same. "What IPTV enables beyond rich media is a richer TV user experience when compared to today’s digital broadcast TV services," says Graczyk, who points to next-generation interactive programming guides as excellent examples of this enhanced capability.

"Unlike traditional text-based program guides, our [interactive programming guide] shows live video thumbnails of the channels you are clicking on as you navigate the guide," says Graczyk. "And our [video-on-demand] storefront technology includes things like programmer-branded screen backgrounds and animated movie poster art instead of just a text- based user experience. … IPTV as we have implemented it does not discriminate between the various media types. When you search for a show for example, search results include all the media types, not just the shows available on the broadcast channels as you have today in digital broadcast systems."

Fast Growth For IPTV

Scopus-Americas President Carlo Basile is well aware of the potential for IPTV to provide a richer end-user experience, but he doubts that the technology will threaten the significant advantages enjoyed by the satellite industry in this realm. Basile expects that the role of satellite technology as the most cost-effective way to distribute content in a broadcast mode will not change substantially with the rollout of IPTV services. "The amount of bandwidth currently required to distribute hundreds of video programs is very big and lends itself well to a point-to-multipoint distribution over satellite," he says. "A central content receive site or headend will aggregate content from satellite downlinks and then distribute it onto a local access network over IP all the way to the subscriber."

The end-to-end distribution of IP content is an attractive option which serves the interests of multiple players. Telcos large and small in North America, Asia and Europe are eagerly launching IPTV services, with Canadian telcos such as Telus, Sasktel and Aliant standing out in particular. In addition to its Telus TV distribution centre in Edmonton, Alberta, for example, Telus is spending an estimated $15 million on a second facility in British Columbia equipped with eight satellite downlinks. This pair of IPTV facilities provides total redundancy as service centers in the event that one headend goes down. Satellite-driven models offer these telcos a wide range of options, and service providers like Auroras Entertainment, which has teamed up with Telesat, and Skyway Connect, which has partnered with Panamsat, make it is possible for any startup to purchase a turnkey IPTV solution.

Iowa Network Services (INS) operates an IPTV network for its owners, a group of 127 independent telcos serving 500,000 rural Iowans. A single headend outside of Des Moines is shared by 17 video service providers throughout the state on a 4,500-mile core fiber ring that the owners fund collectively. INS downlinks the majority of the content in its 177- channel lineup from existing satellite transponders which source content in MPEG-2, says Andy Cote, director, systems engineering and integration, at Lake Oswego, Ore.-based Tut Systems Inc. The IPTV headend includes an ATCI Simulsat dish, off-air antennas for local content and receivers from Motorola and others, along with content processing equipment and the standard cabling required to build a headend. The Tut Systems processor provides "additional compression and grooming of the content for transport over bandwidth constrained networks, but the video remains in the MPEG-2 standard," says Cote. "While INS will soon be encoding or transcoding the content to the MPEG-4/AVC compression standard in order to save up to 50 percent of the bandwidth, INS will continue to keep the MPEG-2 headend for the cable companies that it serves." INS also plans to make 20 channels of high-definition TV (HDTV) available when compatible set-top boxes become available.

"As seen from the Bellsouth tests recently, IPTV via satellite could play a highly significant role if the major carriers see compelling propositions in terms of costs structures and the speed by which satellites can provision IPTV services compared to their current plans to lay fiber infrastructure to the curb or the premise," says Jose del Rosario, senior analyst and regional director for the Asia Pacific at Northern Sky Research. Bellsouth signed an agreement with SES Americom to test a satellite-based video distribution service for Bellsouth’s IP Prime offering for telcos distributing TV programming along with voice and broadband services. SES Americom will provide Bellsouth with video aggregation, encoding, monitoring, and transport over the IP Prime platform, which is based at the SES Americom IPTV Broadcast Center in Vernon Valley, N.J.

The challenge in serving this new IPTV market is making sure that the implementation of the supporting technologies such as middleware, set-top boxes and MPEG-4 encoding evolves on the same timelines as the distribution channels, says Jonathan Feldman, senior vice president, strategic development at Globecast. In North America and Europe, IPTV is a key component of Globecast’s content management service strategy and the company’s IPTV services will include its WorldTV services in 2006. "In America, we entered the IPTV market in early 2005, and we built out and offered an IPTV super headend in Miami to accommodate IPTVComplete, an IPTV service with Eagle Broadband targeting small and medium telcos and multiple dwelling units — clusters or communities such as apartment complexes," says Feldman. "We provide content aggregation, encryption and encoding services, and satellite and fiber distribution transport to the remote headends where the program streams are handed off to the customer’s network headend."

In France, Globecast has been providing services since 2003 for Maligne TV, the IPTV arm of France Telecom. Maligne serves about 200,000 subscribers via asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL). "We most recently began providing aggregation and contribution for a new 30-channel Maligne TV service called Le Bouquet TV. Globecast is providing downlink, aggregation, IP encapsulation, MPEG-4 encoding and contribution to Maligne TV’s headend," says Feldman. "As for video to mobile, we are supplying mobile operator Orange (also owned by France Telecom) with aggregation and contribution of more than 50 channels."

IPTV also is advancing in Asia. In late 2005, Hong Kong-based PCCW’s Broadband TV announced that it had chosen Tandberg Television to implement an IPTV-based HD-over digital- subscriber-line (DSL) service using MPEG4/AVC. The strong demand for IPTV systems that has developed throughout the last year has been reinforced by a stringent requirement when it comes to reliability. "All forecasts suggest that this market is due to continue growing quickly during 2006," says Jonathan Symonds, vice president of product and distribution at Goldpocket, a Tandberg Television company. "In addition, because telco customers are focused on reliability, most are building out two super headends for redundancy purposes. This will drive the growth rate as well,"

Super Headends: Coping With Costs

While IPTV super headends may not be uniquely different from conventional cable or satellite headends, they generally are more expensive. How much more expensive depends upon who you talk to, because IPTV super headends come in many different configurations. "A super headend is a point of aggregation of the majority of TV channels," says Symonds. "Regional and local channels can be added at other points in the operator’s network. An alternative to a super headend is a satellite aggregation system, which acts as a super headend in the sky (HITS)." All satellite, cable, terrestrial and IPTV headends share core components for source acquisition, encoding, multiplexing, network transmission and control, and yet, there are two distinct differences, according to Symonds. "Each video stream must be transmitted in its own self-contained single program transport stream, unlike traditional broadcast systems that use multi program transport streams. The reason for this is that the last mile delivery for IPTV usually has a bandwidth restriction that only allows a small number of TV channels — typically from one to three — to be delivered, he says. "These channels can be any from the full selection of channels available, and therefore, it is not possible to bundle channels together as for cable, satellite and terrestrial broadcasts."

In addition, there are limitations imposed on the bit rate for each service and so the headend needs to operate in either constant bit rate or capped variable bit rate, says Symonds. Still, control and management is no more difficult than with any other headend. "The cost may be slightly higher at this stage since advanced video encoding is often required for IPTV, whereas cable uses lower cost MPEG-2 based equipment. This difference will diminish over time and it is not an issue for most IPTV operators anyway," he says.

Other industry players have an alternative view of headends. "Due to the need for the IPTV encoding and IP-multicasting equipment, an MPEG-4 IPTV headend can cost upwards of $4 million per market, as opposed to approximately $500,000 for a conventional cable headend," says Anthony Bontrager, president and CEO of Bellevue, Wash.-based Broadstream Communications Inc. "Thus, there is tremendous cost and complexity differences between the two." Broadstream has developed an outsourced headend platform known as IPTVConnect, intended to alleviate the significant capital burden of the IPTV headend, allowing the service provider to focus on expanding its core access network, marketing its new video products and driving subscriber growth for a bundled service offering, he says. "Broadstream’s IPTVConnect service offering relies heavily on satellite delivery of our IPTV content and services. Through the use of satellite technology we are able to reach any service provider in the United States who desires to offer IPTV but cannot afford to do it on their own."

On a channel-for-channel basis, nobody seems to dispute the fact that building out an IPTV headend or super headend is more expensive on the hardware side. But MPEG-4/AVC brings with it considerable savings when it comes to operating costs. "We see significant savings in terms of bandwidth; the ability to push many more channels through the same bandwidth," says Feldman. "Additionally, when operating in an IP environment, the overall access/monitoring visibility into headend systems makes the network management process more efficient, while virtual private network access provides improved remote management and troubleshooting."

Content Awareness Remains Key

Session and content awareness plays an important role in this IPTV environment. Francois Modarresse, vice president in charge of product management at Skystream Networks Inc., describes content awareness as essential for multimedia IP over satellite, as voice, video and data transmissions require uninterrupted and jitter-free connections. "While voice and live video may be more tolerant to transmission loss, IPTV requires a jitter-free transmission, as service providers must communicate with subscribers to find the appropriate titles that they wish to view," says Modarresse. "Session awareness is necessary for interactive services such as broadband Internet. When a user requests information via data downloads, a service provider must be able to instantly initiate a session."

Skystream, which was acquired by Tandberg in February, offers a source media router that transmits data in DVB-S/S2 streams. While the encapsulator’s quality-of-service features help service providers deliver low-jitter transmissions for voice over Internet Protocol via satellite and support inherent content flow-control, the source media router also offers a scrambling function for IPTV that integrates with a conditional access system that controls encryption.

Skystream’s Mediaplex and iPlex headends promote content and session awareness through subscriber automation, tracking each subscriber’s content requests.

"Session awareness is very important in IPTV," says Basile. "The IPTV environment is a session-based delivery mechanism. Subscribers constantly set up and tear down sessions. In opposition to a traditional broadcast environment where the network does not have to be aware of the session, the IPTV headend needs to dynamically switch/route the right content to the right subscriber in real time. Scopus provides the ability to switch and process video in real time and support the necessary IP protocols such as Internet Group Management Protocol, allowing users to pull/push video from/to an IP network," he says.

The session awareness role also makes IPTV a compelling propositions for the provisioning of TV services a la carte. "If the viewer pays for a 30-channel package on IPTV, session or content awareness allows the consumer to view the 30 channels that he or she wants and not the 30 or 120 channels that he or she gets out of a typical cable TV or [direct-to-home] package," says del Rosario.

Compression breakthroughs and the fact that content may arrive at the headend from multiple sources or networks only adds another layer of complexity to the process at hand. "We know how to get the maximum picture quality out of a signal, which is especially important as we compress channels to dramatically lower bit rates," says Feldman. "The native signals are arriving in any number of standards and qualities, and they are coming from disparate networks, including IP, fiber, satellite and terrestrial. Expertise at the point of ingest, aggregation and multiplex is critical to the telco delivering a quality signal."

BTV Benefits

Enterprise customers may want to take a close look at IPTV. The Business TV (BTV) sector may find that while private VSAT networks offer distinct advantages, there are IPTV options available as well. IPTV-enabled infrastructure can accommodate BTV, and there are distinct advantages in doing this, says del Rosario, who emphasizes that enterprises that conduct BTV on an occasional use basis in particular might find that IPTV is a more cost-effective way to deliver content.

"The advantage is that it is probably cheaper to deliver content using IPTV compared to traditional means, since a transponder rental or lease that goes on quarter-hour rates may be expensive. This is, of course, unless a whole transponder is leased for the purposes of BTV only, which means that an enterprise utilizes BTV at very high levels," says del Rosario. "This may not be the case in many instances, however."

While the model discussed is driven by the presence of BTV in advance of any IPTV transport, there is an opposing model whereby IPTV is used to easily implement a BTV solution. "IPTV is an effective way to implement BTV," says Martijn Lopes Cardozo, executive vice president, distribution & partnerships at Goldpocket. "This is especially true if all the users are already on a high-speed WAN or LAN network. This is a function of the existing billing relationship the IPTV operator may have with the customer. While IPTV itself does not present business model challenges, growing a highly capital expenditure intensive business as the third or fourth entrant has its challenges. These include content acquisition, advertising and operating scale. The most sophisticated entrants have long term goals as overcoming these challenges will require focus and time."

Because so many BTV channels are IP-based, using the same technology used for IPTV, this can open the door to some innovative collaboration. "Because IPTV systems are encrypted, it is feasible for a corporation to strike a deal with a telco to extend the reach of their training network to end users at home, if they are passed by the telcos’ IPTV franchise. It is a question of aggregating and encrypting the BTV feed at the headend," says Feldman.

According to Bontrager, IPTV can be implemented for BTV purposes for enterprise-wide training seminars, remote employee meetings and president’s messages, among other uses. "The advantages are the ability to encode the content at a low bit rate and deliver the content through a traditional [virtual private network]. The cost of the systems are not inexpensive, but the bandwidth savings and video quality should compensate for the cost," he says.

Basile stresses that for BTV purposes, IP delivery allows a unified delivery of multiple services beyond traditional video services. "IP allows the delivery of services to business using a single, dynamic network infrastructure," he says.

IPTV Over Satellite Works But Challenges Remain

Satellite faces a few big challenges as the IPTV race gets underway, such as the lack of an ubiquitous, two-way network. "We have certainly seen some examples of what I would call basic rich media and interactivity in satellite services like BSkyB, but the lack of a fast, always-on back channel limits what is possible," says Graczyk.

Other aspects of satellite network operations need to be adjusted or upgraded in order to accommodate or more efficiently handle IPTV. According to Feldman, a new skill set is needed so engineers and operations personnel can evolve and better understand IPbased applications. "The result is a new dynamic where traditional video operations staffs must learn to team with IT operations staffs; a mixing of very different disciplines who were previously wary of each other," he says. "Satellite versus fiber is not what forces the adjustment. It is operating in an IP-IPTV environment that pushes the envelope of convergence, the delivery of traditional video content in a data world of ones and zeros," he says. "Everything from encapsulation of signals into an IP-transport stream or a multi-protocol transport stream to the ability to remotely manage the nodes on a network from a central location, transitions the transmission support from a technical operations center environment to a data-oriented network operations center environment."

To effectively and efficiently handle the growth of IPTV, satellite service providers must deal with transmission, target customers and service differentiation methods, says Modarresse. Besides embracing DVB-S2 and MPEG4/AVC to save bandwidth, while maintaining superior picture quality, satellite service providers that deliver content to regional wired or wireless operators must customize their programming line-up for local customers. "These operators rely on edge solutions to multiplex, encode and transcode content that create a personalized program lineup," he says. "When it comes to service differentiation, IPTV opens satellite service providers to next-generation services, including push , an alternative to network . This involves prepositioning content in subscribers’ set-top boxes and eliminating denial-of-service messages associated with peak-time cable requests."

IPTV is not only coming on fast but also is arriving at a time when the customer knows that he or she can exercise absolute control over the content. Some officials say the key to capitalizing is to roll out set-top boxes with digital video recorders bundled with IPTV offerings as fast as possible.

IPTV is turning heads, and where there are eyeballs, money is sure to follow.