Motivation

As the lead Study Group on multimedia applications, terminals and systems, including ubiquitous applications, SG 16 continues to make advances in multimedia communication systems that are pertinent in the fast moving market and continues to respond to the demands of the market by taking advantage of emerging as well as existing technologies.
In this regard, SG 16 has been successful in producing numerous Recommendations which address topical areas such as multimedia terminal design, home networking, multimedia architecture, audiovisual communications, multimedia conferencing, media coding, multimedia content, multimedia security, metadata, multimedia directories, multimedia service description and multimedia delivery systems.

As broadband services over various access technologies have evolved and with the advent of the next generation network technology, the desire and need for the enhanced multimedia services has gained momentum and, as is typical when there is rapid evolution in a new technology area, proprietary multimedia service solutions precede standard interoperable solutions. Specifically with the surge of multimedia services such as video streaming and the desire to offer IPTV services, the market is in serious need of standardized interoperable solutions, especially at the multimedia applications layer. Interoperability will provide benefit for all the players in the value-chain, especially at the multimedia applications layer, and encourage growth of this market.

IPTV is a multimedia service encompassing television, video, audio, text, graphics and data delivered over IP based networks which are managed to provide the required level of QoS and QoE, security, interactivity and reliability. Standards for IPTV, especially those for application and terminal aspects, are of immediate relevance to ITU-T in general and to SG 16 in particular. SG 16 is interested, among other things, in the associated multimedia (including IPTV) application and terminal aspects.

This Question is intended to produce deliverables related to study IPTV platforms, including, but not restricted to middleware, applications, content formats and their uses, which will facilitate effective and interoperable use of the IPTV systems.

This Question will be the recipient of a number of documents from the FG IPTV and it will assimilate these into its work programme with the intention of generating a number of Recommendations as Question deliverables.

Study items

Study items to be considered include, but are not limited to:

• Identify the use cases and requirements of IPTV application platforms and end system aspects
• Review and analyze existing standards and Recommendations to find any gaps seen against the requirements of IPTV application platforms and end systems, and to identify those requirements where new standards or changes to existing standards are recommended
• Help coordinate, harmonize and encourage interoperability among existing systems and standards for IPTV application platforms and end systems
• Investigate functional architectures of the IPTV terminal
• Identify services and applications relevant to IPTV application platforms and end systems
• Based on the analysis of requirements and existing standards, create Recommendations covering the relevant areas, including but not limited to:
  • Metadata, i.e. the descriptive data about content
  • Content and service navigation applications, such as interactive programme guide (IPG) and enhanced electronic programme guide (EPG)
  • Service navigation, channel and menu processing
  • Content discovery
  • Content presentation and execution engines
  • IPTV middleware
  • IPTV end system and terminal device
• Considerations on how to help measure and mitigate climate change

Tasks

Tasks include, but are not limited to, the development of the following new Recommendations:

• Required aspects of IPTV end systems
• Required aspects of Home Networks to support IPTV services
• Required aspects of IPTV Middleware, Application and Content Platforms
• Required aspects of an IPTV Toolbox for content coding
• Required aspects of IPTV Middleware
• IPTV Service Navigation Systems
• IPTV Metadata requirements
• Enhancement and maintenance of T.170-series, T.180 and H-series Supplement 3

An up-to-date status of work under this Question is found in the SG 16 work programme (http://itu.int/ITU-T/workprog/wp_search.aspx?isn_sg=554).

Relationships

Recommendations:

• F, G, H, I, Q, T, V, X, Y series Recommendations under the responsibility of SG 16

Questions:

• 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 10, 20, 21, 22, 26/16

Study Groups:

• ITU-T SGs 2, 9, 11, 12, 13, 15 and 17
• ITU-R SG 6

Other Bodies:

• ATIS, CEA, DLNA, DSL Forum, DVB, HGI, OASIS
• ISO, IEC, ETSI, IETF