Sysmaster IPTV Introduction

ibtv introduction and overview a brief

description of the technology as it

relates to the entrepreneur and the

service provider this is the first in a

series of quick videos each of them just

a few minutes long that we are creating

to answer some common questions that

come up from time to time regarding iptv

and more specifically how to start a

business whether it's for specialized

content or more of the traditional

service provider

this first video is just an introduction

i'm not going to get into the technology

at all i will mention briefly some of

the components of a complete system and

talk briefly about what an iptv business

really is

so what is a business a business is

going to have certain generic components

you have products you have consumers

somehow or another you have to get these

products to the consumers and you may

want to charge the product you may also

need someone to keep track of it

for example system capacity and

utilization

products customers delivery method

billing and customer service

so what is your business more

specifically you could be an ip

television service provider this is the

traditional broadcast tv business model

that we think of but using the public

internet to transport the video you

could be a specialized content provider

video catering to a specific market

segment such as foreign language video

could be ip video for business hotels

hospitals enterprise multiple dwelling

units

so who's going to be watching this video

and how are they going to be watching it

they'll be using cell phones tablets

personal computers televisions could be

a smart watch it could be at home or it

could be in business

video sources where does all this

product come from when someone hoping to

start a business contacts me this is

usually where things start to seem a bit

fuzzy

what are the possible video sources

the answer is all around us satellite

dishes terrestrial by this i mean the

humble antenna the ubiquitous cable box

could be video stored on physical media

so the next question is how do we take

this video and package it up so that it

can be transmitted over the internet to

our customers

all right so we know we're going to use

a network of some kind public or private

but how are we going to package up this

video what specifically pieces of

equipment are we going to need we're

going to need encoders

to ingest video from the various sources

and prepare it for transmission onto the

net we're going to use streamers to send

the video directly to the consumer and

of course we're going to need some kind

of management

okay so let's talk about encoders

the first piece in the chain the encoder

is going to ingest this video coming

from the sources that we just discussed

wrap it up in an ip packet so that we

can insert that video into the internet

encoding is fairly processor intensive

so a single box is not likely to be able

to encode real time and stream video to

many customers

so the next step is going to be the

streamers

we have a single video stream wrapped up

in ip but how do we get it out to our

subscribers

streamers the streamer will ingest the

output of the encoder and copy it copy

it over the internet to the subscribers

set-top box handheld device or computer

a streamer may also encrypt and you may

want to time shift your video this will

also happen at the streamer and will be

discussed in more detail at a future

date

finally as i alluded to you're going to

need management

here are some of the

typical functions of a management server

you're going to want to provide a

customer website for your subscribers to

sign in and check the status

you're going to be able to want to log

into your server yourself

you're going to want to be able to

authenticate

you want to manage the customers you

want to manage your content your

channels you may have some additional

services for example airline schedules

and you want to be able to accept

payments over the over the internet

you're going to want to rate your

content you're going to want to bill for

it and you're going to want to create

reports both for your usage and for your

providers all this is going to require a

database

we talked about the business models you

could be a service provider you could be

a hotel hospitals multiple dwelling

units we talked about the video sources

the video source could be satellite

could be terrestrial could be cable

could be physical media we talked about

the components of an iptv business

encoders streamers management service

middleware

in future videos we will get into more

detail