Archive for February, 2008
Video as a means of communication between people has been with us for over a decade, but it hadn’t made it mainstream yet. It seems like there is evidence of that changing.Technology wise, we are almost there: We now have the processing power, bandwidth and knowledge of how to build a video system enabling people to interact in real-time and provide good quality of experience. Only problem is, video telephony is not taking off as much as it should, but
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By Tsahi Levent-Levi | February 28th, 2008 | Filed under Clients
Video telephony as a technology is making its way to the consumer market. The next step is the set top boxes and the world of IPTV.Today, people around the world can use video calling on millions of 3G mobile handsets in Europe and Asia. There are issues with pricing, usability and quality, but I can never have enough of the smiles of my baby girl on my 3G phone. Video telephony on mobile handsets is just the beginning – in
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By Tsahi Levent-Levi | February 21st, 2008 | Filed under Clients, IPTV
Megaco is back for another round, like the phoenix, it re-emerges after burning to ashes. Why now? IMS, of course…Megaco, also known as H.248, is a standard used to decompose multimedia gateways. If you’re developing a large scalable gateway, with a lot of multimedia processing, then splitting the logic of the application from the “dirty” processing of the media itself is a wise thing to do. In such a case, the communication protocol between the logic and the media can be Megaco – and this is exactly what is done in IMS when developing MRFs (Media Resource Function). Now, prior to IMS, I’ve seen Megaco demand from customers fluctuating – every year or two, the demand lowers, only to rise again a year later. Now, Megaco, as the Phoenix it is, is rising again from its ashes for IMS – and it’s doing it gloriously. There are a lot of companies out there developing products for the IMS infrastructure – those developing gateways or other media servers are in need for Megaco. If you are looking for Megaco stack, then search no more.
By Tsahi Levent-Levi | February 14th, 2008 | Filed under Technology
I read a while ago an opinion stating that there is no need anymore for standards – people choose their proprietary way of communication by installing a given application on their desktop or mobile device – be it Skype or one of the other services out there. I disagree with this view. Proprietary solutions definitely have room in our world. If you take telecommunication, the first thing that comes to mind is Skype. They are based on a proprietary protocol,
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By Tsahi Levent-Levi | February 7th, 2008 | Filed under Standardization
Last week I had the opportunity to present at TVoDSL 2008. What did I learn at the conference? IPTV revolves around 3 concepts today: Quality Interactivity UGC Most people use Google Reader Quality Quality is key in IPTV. Using the IP medium means that you can’t guarantee quality the same way you can in traditional TV broadcasting. A lot of effort is being
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By Tsahi Levent-Levi | February 5th, 2008 | Filed under IPTV
