February 23, 2011

BigBand Introduces Managed Adaptive Streaming

At the CableLabs Winter Conference 2011, BigBand Networks will introduce a hybrid approach to managing HTTP adaptive streaming traffic. The approach helps cable MSOs expand their broadcast TV and on-demand services to reach their subscribers’ IP-connected consumer electronic devices, such as the iPad, tablets, netbooks, PCs, and gaming consoles. The solution is designed to efficiently manage and leverage the existing resources of a video delivery network. It also improves bandwidth utilization and equalizes video quality across all services by leveraging a technique called "quality-based bandwidth allocation."

A significant portion of the network traffic to reach subscriber's unmanaged IP-connected devices is expected to be in the form of standard adaptive streaming over HTTP. However, this method does not allow efficient utilization of the resources of the video delivery network since a standard adaptive streaming session has no visibility to the other sessions sharing the same bandwidth. Alternatively, managing all video services together and adopting a hybrid view for adaptive streaming would incorporate video oriented aspects of session management and dynamic network resources allocation.

"Managing HTTP adaptive streaming traffic results in significantly better results for bandwidth utilization and video quality as compared to other IP-video transport alternatives,” said Amit Eshet, senior director/Media Processing, BigBand Networks, in a statement. "The spectrum dedicated to the delivery of video to set-top boxes can also be used for the delivery of video to IP devices in a 'bandwidth-free' manner that doesn’t degrade the legacy service."

At the CableLabs Winter Conference, February 27-March 2 in Atlanta, Georgia, BigBand will demonstrate how managed adaptive streaming outperforms standard adaptive streaming with regard to bandwidth utilization and video quality for various IP consumer electronic devices.