ITU-T’s work on IPTV standards has progressed significantly in recent weeks with a raft of new specifications agreed.
The work has moved on from the foundation documents containing high-level architectures and frameworks to more detailed specifications. Experts say that this is an important milestone that will allow manufacturers to start implementing the specifications in their products.
A standardized IPTV environment could mean an end to walled-garden approaches where subscribers are limited to content from a particular service provider. It would for example make it easier for ex-pat subscribers to consume content from their countries of origin.
Among standards consented or approved recently include Recommendation ITU-T H.720 which gives the overview of the architecture and functional components of an IPTV terminal device and provides a high-level description of functionality necessary to support IPTV services. Also key is ITU-T H.721 which describes and specifies the functionalities of IPTV terminal devices such as set-top boxes and digital TV sets for IPTV basic services. The Recommendation also takes into consideration such conditions on content delivery as QoS.
Below is a list of recent ITU standards approved or ‘consented’ by ITU-T’s Study Group 16:
- Rec. H.701 - Content Delivery Error Recovery for IPTV services
- Rec. H.721 - IPTV Terminal Device: Basic Model
- Rec. H.760 - Overview of Multimedia Application Frameworks for IPTV
- Rec. H.761 - Nested Context Language (NCL) and Ginga-NCL for IPTV
- Rec. H.720 - Overview of IPTV terminal devices and end systems
- Rec. H.750 - High-level specification of metadata for IPTV services
- Rec. H.622.1 - Architecture and functional requirements for home networks supporting IPTV services
In addition a Technical Paper has been approved that addresses the use of audio coding in services delivered over IPTV
See also New IPTV standard supports global rollout.
Membership of ITU-T gives exclusive rights to access working documents of standards under development – tomorrow’s ICTs. The vast majority of all Recommendations are available in electronic (PDF) form free of charge to all once a final editing process is complete.
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