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IPTV and Whole-Home Digital Cinema Networking Applications (3/3/2008)

By Gerard O'Driscoll, TVMentors Research Services

There are currently a number of consortiums and alliances involved in the process of defining in-home technologies that allow custom installers to extend the digital home cinema experience beyond the boundaries of the traditional sitting and living room areas. All of these initiatives are using the IP protocol to transport high-quality broadcast and on-demand TV content over an in-home networking infrastructure. This migration to IPTV-based home systems is expected to accelerate over the next three to five years.

One of the biggest challenges faced by IPTV service providers is reliably distributing whole-home digital cinema networking (WHDCN) applications throughout a customer's premises, so partnering with IPTV service providers to resolve these challenges will create new openings for resellers and custom installers.

Defining WHDCN

As the name implies, WHDCN defines a suite of IPTV 2.0 applications that are delivered to a variety of different consumer devices in any part of a house. IP-based high-definition home cinema and holographic 3D are examples of WHDCN applications that are starting to put increasing strains on current home networking infrastructures. From the service provider's perspective, a high-speed distribution networking platform is required to underpin the delivery of WHDCN content to people's homes. Once WHDCN bandwidth-intensive applications arrive at the in-home network, custom installers will be required to design, and ultimately implement, interconnection technologies that meet the following requirements:

1. High-bandwidth throughput
WHDCN networking technologies must not only carry traffic at average rates, but support peak data rates at particular times, day or night.

2. High Quality of Service (QoS)
The networking platform chosen by the custom installer must be capable of prioritising WHDCN traffic over other applications such as standard Web browsing.

3. Ability to deal with interference
WHDCN interconnection technologies must deal with interference that occurs within the home, and in some cases, that originates from external sources such as neighbours.

Selecting a WHDCN enabling technology

One of the key challenges faced by custom installers is deciding on an interconnection technology that will allow their clients to effectively run WHDCN applications when they become widely available from 2010 onwards. The following technologies should be considered when selecting a WHDCN networking platform:

1. HDMI

Although the debate between the advantages of pre-wiring a house with HDMI cables versus using a more traditional component video cabling infrastructure rages on within our industry, custom installers need to seriously consider the fact that HDMI will ultimately capture a large proportion of the emerging WHDCN marketplace. The figure below shows an example of how a system integrator could use HDMI cabling to extend the digital home cinema experience beyond the living room to other parts of the house.

Example of how HDMI cabling can be used to extend the digital home cinema experience beyond the living room.

2. HomePlug AV

The HomePlug AV technology is the successor to HomePlug 1.0, and was designed from the ground up to support high-bandwidth and low-latency requirements of IP-based WHDCN applications. The fact that a growing number of European-based IPTV service providers are using HomePlug to distribute IPTV streams over standard home power cables, presents digital home integrators with an opportunity to offer clients sophisticated products that leverage this technology.

3. Gigabit Ethernet (GigE)

The use of GigE networking equipment is becoming an increasingly important part of the digital home networking industry. GigE-based home networks have a number of advantages. Ethernet is reliable and may be used in a home environment to network most types of IPTV consumer devices including PCs, media servers, and digital set-top boxes. Adding WHDCN applications to a home network dramatically increases the demand for higher transmission rates, but advanced Ethernet technologies are able to meet the growing bandwidth demands of these applications types. Ethernet is also widely supported by many different vendors and is an integral part of a number of different home networking standards. GigE therefore holds great promise in becoming the defacto underlying transport media for networking homes that include a structured wiring system.

4. 802.11n

Although GigE technologies offer digital home integrators a robust and reliable solution for planning a WHDCN deployment strategy, their implementation requires the installation of high-grade category 5e or category 6 structured wiring systems. This is obviously problematic for many homeowners whose houses were built without a low-voltage structured wiring system. Fortunately, the emergence of 'no new wiring' and wireless technologies such as 802.11n offers prospects for solving the mass-market adoption of WHDCN networking. Therefore custom installers that carry out retrofit projects should start considering the use of 802.11n solutions for moving WHDCN applications around a house.

Conclusion

IPTV subscribers are starting to demand home-cinema-style sound and video in different locations within their homes. This in turn leads to a demand for networks that have the bandwidth capacity to distribute next-generation WHDCN applications.

By using technologies such as HDMI, HomePlug AV, GigE and IEEE 802.1n, European custom installers are now able to create high-speed multimedia home networks that are capable of supporting a host of next-generation WHDCN services and applications.

Gerard O'Driscoll is an international telecommunications expert, entrepreneur, and author of the book 'Next Generation IPTV Services and Technologies'.

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