NAB: MobiTV enhances mobile content delivery

New delivery server brings live media over broadband, wireless networks

LAS VEGAS – In conjunction with the National Association of Broadcaster’s show this week in Las Vegas, MobiTV today unveiled an enhanced version of its Optimized Delivery Server to distribute live, clip-linear, video on demand (VOD) and downloadable media over broadband and wireless networks. The updated content-delivery technology is intended to optimize network utilization and the user experience for mobile television.

While typically known for unicasting real-time TV over operator’s networks, MobiTV’s new RTP/RTSP- and 3GPP-compliant server combines unicast and multicast distribution methods into a single delivery platform. The technology is integrated into MobiTV’s end-to-end managed hosted service, the Connected Media Solutions, and – as of today – is available for licensing to partners and customers wanting to enter the mobile TV market over their existing network architectures.

“What we are saying is that you can now buy our ODM server and get its feature sets,” said Kay Johansson, CTO of MobiTV. “We are not changing MobiTV to be a software company; we are just adding a mix to it. We can help you get content or sell ads, since it’s another component to what we are doing. I think it is going to be a strategic right step for us. I think it’s the next evolution. Even if we have customers today running complete end-to-end managed services, it makes sense to go there.”

Using network resources through the creation of a distributed network, the platform is intended to decrease backhaul, offer comprehensive usage reporting, fully redundant architecture and support for all devices. The Optimized Delivery Server is also designed to improve the user experience through bandwidth smoothing, seamless network handover and bandwidth adaptation through stream switching, thinning and rate shaping.

As the backhaul limits are being tested by increased cell phone usage of services like mobile TV, Johansson said, the server’s support for both multicast and unicast delivery will offer more flexibility in how network resources are utilized without channel lineup limitations.


“You have all these issues with fluctuated networks, up and down in bit-rate and going through tunnels,” Johansson explained. “How do we lower the cost of distributing media? I think you’ve heard the problem with video is that it’s congesting the network – it is not really congesting the cell sites. You have a lot of bandwidth, but the real problem is usually backhaul. We are close to 4 million subscribers today; we run the biggest service in the world around this, so we have to solve the backhaul thing to lower the cost and make it financially viable.”

To address the backhaul issue, he said the service is designed to live outside of the data center. To optimize bandwidth in the backhaul, MobiTV only delivers content to the sectors of the market that demand it. Furthermore, partners and customers that license the technology can adapt their networks as their business grow, starting with a single cluster in a data center and adding additional clusters in network nodes as needed.

At this year’s CES show, MobiTV announced it would add A-VSB to its list of support of multicast technologies, entering the space as a business model partner. Part of this support was to include experimenting with targeted advertising and interactivity, a facet of mobile TV that the new server will open up in the form of targeted advertising inserts and personalization options. This includes in-stream insertion for live and clip-linear content and post- and pre-roll ad placements in VOD and downloaded content. Personalized, targeted ads – still somewhat further down most carriers’ business plans – can be delivered to specific users based on a submitted profile.

While the business model is a source of consternation for carriers, a primary gripe of mobile TV users is the slow transition time between channels and as a video begins on unicast, often incurring a delay of up to 15 seconds on a wireless network. MobiTV’s latest incarnation of the delivery server allows for faster session starts and channel changes. Johansson said the new technology will make it possible to change channels in less than one second.

Johansson also said that the offer has the potential to expand into three screens – from the wireless to the PC and even television, over IPTV. MobiTV’s goal is not to help companies with their content, he said. Rather, it is to enable the technology to be distributed over IP networks.

Thus far, adoption of mobile TV has been rather limited in the US, with the service only available to a limited number of handsets and struggling to find the right business model. Johansson said every time MobiTV increases the usability of its service, it sees an uptake in usage. “We know the interest is there; it is more about the quality,” he said. “The quality of the content is very important as well.”

MobiTV is also holding a press conference this afternoon at the NAB show in conjunction with Samsung, Rhode & Schwarz, SES-Americom, Nokia and Nokia Siemens Networks, all members of the A-VSB Initiative. The announcement is expected to build on their CES introduction of AVS-B and the mobile TV market.