Archive for September, 2008
I’ve been blabbering about 3G-324M mobile video telephony for a while here. Most of the stuff I’ve written, though not all of it, is quite technical. When Luca Filigheddu asked for guest posts, I said yes, and it was decided that a good topic would be the way services are provisioned in mobile video telephony. I’ll give a short spoiler here - to do services in mobile video telephony, which is circuit switched based in nature, you need to use VoIP. Head over to Luca’s blog to read why and how services are deployed in mobile video calling.
By Tsahi Levent-Levi | September 30th, 2008 | Filed under Technology
I recently purchased a Wii gaming console for my wife’s birthday. She is a Pilates teacher, and Wii Fit seemed like a fit present. While working on adding the additional wires to my living room’s overcrowded electronics display, I tried to figure out which electronic device is the real hub of my house. The future of my living room I am not a gadget freak - far from it. But I do have a modest home network, with
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By Tsahi Levent-Levi | September 29th, 2008 | Filed under IPTV
RTSP is a must for IPTV today. It is what makes VOD (Video on Demand) work. As a protocol, RTSP is quite simple: you open an HTTP connection and send messages over it that are similar to the physical remote control for video (play, pause, etc.). But will it do? Does IPTV really sum up to a smart web VCR? I already described my future TV, which requires more than that. Can SIP, our Swiss Army Knife, take the
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By Tsahi Levent-Levi | September 25th, 2008 | Filed under IPTV, Standardization
Two days ago I wrote about the reason why IPTV must be interactive. And it’s simple - people expect it to be interactive. I also pointed the great speech Clay Shirky gave at Web 2.0 Expo. I came across another one - this time on TED Talks, where Peter Hirshberg gives the relationship of the computer and the television. Here’s a short transcript from the beginning of this talk: Peter: Let’s listen what happens when they get to
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By Tsahi Levent-Levi | September 24th, 2008 | Filed under IPTV
For awhile, I’ve been pitching that IPTV needs to be as interactive as possible. After hearing Clay Shirky’s speech about cognitive surplus (through Chris Andersons’ The Long Tail blog), it becomes easy to understand why IPTV can only work well by being interactive. Clay makes a point that television was there when, all of a sudden, society had too much free time in hand, due to the move towards a five day work week. And now, that we are
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By Tsahi Levent-Levi | September 22nd, 2008 | Filed under IPTV
You can’t discuss communication protocols nowadays without bringing up IMS. Although IMS started as a mobile-centric protocol, it is now all encompassing and also includes IPTV. Since both Packet Cable and TISPAN make use of IMS, IPTV also has an IMS architecture connected to it. IMS for IPTV starts simply from the fact that operators today are mostly triple-play or quad-play players: their services include telephony, television, internet browsing and mobile phones. Quad-play doesn’t mean convergence in any way -
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By Tsahi Levent-Levi | September 18th, 2008 | Filed under IPTV
This week the carnival is at Always On Real-Time Access. Check out the collection of posts there.
By Tsahi Levent-Levi | September 16th, 2008 | Filed under Around the net
My interest in operating systems for different platforms has already shown itself when talking about mobile handsets. The same question applies to the IPTV world. As we move towards an appliance that sits in the living room and does essentially everything, what operating system will it be using? Are we going to be ruled by Microsoft or by Linux? Windows Microsoft is making moves towards the living room. It started with Windows CE being pushed on set top box manufacturers,
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By Tsahi Levent-Levi | September 15th, 2008 | Filed under Clients, IPTV
I just wanted to point you to two great posts on the other two blogs here: Types of Product Managers Ran over at Code of Contact just wrote about the 4 types of product managers. It’s a great read for product managers and engineers. As a Product Manager myself, I hope I am tagged as the super star by them. Video Quality Hurdles Dealing with video conferencing is not easy. It’s a lot harder than doing streaming or pure voice over IP. One of the reasons for that is that it’s hard to maintain high video quality. Sagee Ben-Zedeff at Video over Enterprise has a great overview of the pesky problems video coders need to deal with.
By Tsahi Levent-Levi | September 12th, 2008 | Filed under Around the net
I have started this IPTV series with a rant that current IPTV features are not enough. It is time I outline the list of applications for my future TV. Some of them are going to be related with connectivity while others with hard-core technology requirements. I will be skipping the usual suspects of VOD and EPG and assume they simply exist. Here’s the list of the application I’d really like to see in my future TV. 1. Video Telephony
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By Tsahi Levent-Levi | September 11th, 2008 | Filed under IPTV
