User-driven automatic test-case generation for DTV/STB reliable functional verification

With the rapid development of digital TV and deployment of set-top boxes, standardizing remote controllers for both digital TV and set-top box has become an issue for digital TV operators, set-top box producers and remote controller manufacturers. This paper presented a novel method to solve the incompatibility problem among different digital TV sets, set-top boxes and remote controllers. This novel method tries to cater digital TV sets and set-top boxes to remote controllers instead of designing a universal standardized remote controller for digital TV sets and set-top boxes. The benefits of the new method are shown by comparison of the novel solution with the universal remote controller based method. Some design guidelines for the proposed method are also presented in this paper.

An increased complexity of current Set-Top Box (STB) solutions is accompanied by more difficult verification of wide range of supporting functionalities. Due to large number of the STB functionalities the menu of the STB, which is considered as the main tool for the STB control, is of more complex structure. The complexity of the STB menu structure makes both manual and automatic control of the STB more difficult, which is crucial for efficient STB functional verification. This paper proposes a new solution for automated error free navigation through the STB menu for effective functional verification of the STB. The proposed testing solution is based on the existing Black-box testing (BBT) system for testing STB, by specially designed functional drivers. The BBT is customizable, easy to use, cost effective automated solution for system testing of STB. The testing approach for automatic error free navigation through STB menu is based on the constructed software-wise menu structure that enables automatic setting of the STB in a desired STB state, given the extracted string content of the current STB state and the target menu item. Specifically, in proposed scheme the STB menu is automatically navigated from the start to the target state iteratively until the current and the target state are found to be equal. The proposed testing solution provides greater testing efficiency and reliability for the STB functional verification as a result of automatic navigation through the STB menus, which reduces the amount of manual test-case generation.

This work shows the implementation of a hybrid STB (Set Top Box) that receives real-time digital signals for ISDB-Tb and IPTV. The implementation integrates middleware GINGA for interactive DTT applications based on low cost platforms. The features of the hardware platform for this implementation are analyzed so that they can integrate USB reception modules for digital TV, support interactive middleware versions and also be compatible with TV playback software by means of internet protocols. After the analysis and evaluation, we found that the most suitable board to achieve this implementation was Raspberry Pi 3. The development of the Android mobile graphic interface is also shown, which emulates a remote control by Bluetooth technology. Finally, the results of the implemented hybrid STB’s evaluation are presented; evaluation performed by reception tests of DTT channels with interactivity and free IPTV channels. Also, quantitative readings were made to test the performance and correct operation, as well as qualitative MOS polls to get the quality of user experience when handling the decoder.

Recently, as set-top box (STB) tends to become a potential converged system thanks to cloud technology, it is possible to run many applications requiring CPU-intensive processing remotely through legacy STB. Whereas, as STB normally consumes 80∼90% power level even when not in use, many ideas have proposed to reduce the standby power of it. But all of them don't describe a method how to control many kinds of applications affecting the energy consumption of clients in cloud without delay at any circumstance. So, In order to reduce the standby power of legacy STB and provide cloud services efficiently at the same time, a power saving scheme for cloud service on legacy STB is required. As the delay time of STB for receiving the rendered images from the cloud platform is an important factor on QoE (Quality of Experience), we present an efficient power saving scheme for control cloud services through legacy STB requiring fast response time and consuming the low power.

Maximum coverage with minimum testing time is the main objective of a test case generation activity which leads to a multi-objective problem. Search-Based Testing (SBT) technique is a demanding research area for test case generation. Researchers have applied various metaheuristic (searching) algorithms to generate efficient and effective test cases in many research works. Out of these existing search-based algorithms, Genetic Algorithm (GA) and Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) are the most widely used algorithms in automatic test case generation. In this paper, a test case generation approach is proposed using Cuckoo Search (CS) algorithm. CS has a controlling feature, Levy flights, which makes it more efficient in searching the best candidate solution. It helps to generate efficient test cases in terms of code coverage and execution time. In our proposed method, test cases are generated based on path coverage criteria. Fitness of a test case is evaluated using branch distance and approximation level combined functions. The result is compared with PSO and with its variant Adaptive PSO (APSO). The experimental result shows that both the algorithms give nearly equal to the same result. Though the results are nearly equal, the implementation of CS is simple as it requires only one parameter to be tuned.

Set-Top Box device functionalities have been advancing fast during the last decade. This has been mainly triggered by appearance of new multimedia services and applications. Given the high complexity of the STB and large amount of services to be supported, the STB functional verification has become highly challenging task, from both the testing time and testing reliability perspective. High competitiveness and the need to reduce time-to-market make efficient automatic STB testing absolutely necessary. Although automatic testing is considered superior to the manual testing, in general it is difficult to design it for different real case scenarios, and especially in case the input multimedia signal is unknown (live video stream). Another problem is that optimally multiple STB should be tested simultaneously in order to reduce the testing time, in cases when detailed stress testing is required. In order to address these issues, in this paper we propose a new solution and system (with hardware and software modules) for automatic simultaneous functional verification system of multiple Set-Top Boxes based on Black Box Testing (BBT). In the proposed testing system one STB serves as the referent one (for the rest of the STBs under test) with a priory known "faultless" functionality. This enables the STB functional testing with unknown input signal (during live video stream), because the output of the referent STB will serve as the expected output given the same unknown input signal. This is considered as the main contribution of the proposed testing approach along with the acceleration of the STB functional verification process which ensures reduction of time and costs that is considered to be crucial in STB production. The experimental results show high testing accuracy, robustness and efficiency in case of live broadcast video (DVB-S).

This article introduces a packet-layer model that estimates users' quality of experience (QoE) of audiovisual communication services from packet header information.This model can be incorporated into a client terminal (e.g., home gateway and set-top box) because the computational load for quality estimation is very light.Therefore, this model is applicable to in-service quality management at user premises.

Dedications. Preface. Organizational and Topical Coverage. Who should read this book. Acknowledgements. About the Author. Foreword. Chapter 1. The Ultimate Viewing Experience. 1.1 Defining IPTV. 1.2 Differences between IPTV and Internet TV. 1.3 Overview of an IPTV Networking Infrastructure. 1.4 Key IPTV Applications and Services. 1.5 Growth Drivers for IPTV. 1.6 Market Data. 1.7 Industry Initiatives to Standardize IPTV. 1.8 Summary. Chapter 2. IPTV Network Distribution Technologies. 2.1 'Last Mile' Broadband Distribution Network Types. 2.2 IPTV over a Fiber Access Network. 2.3 IPTV over an ADSL Network. 2.4 Next Generation Cable TV Networks. 2.5 IPTV over a Satellite Based Network. 2.6 IPTV over Wireless Networks. 2.7 IPTV over the Interne t. 2.8 IPTV Backbone Technologies. 2.9 Network Factors Associated with Deploying IPTV. 2.10 Summary. Chapter 3. IPTV Real Time Encoding and Transportation. 3.1 Introduction to Real-Time Encoding. 3.2 Compression Methods. 3.3 Packetizing and Encapsulating Video Content. 3.4 Summary. Chapter 4. Broadcasting Linear Programming over IPTV. 4.1 Underlying Video Components of an end-to-end IPTV System. 4.2 Different Approaches to Streaming IPTV Content. 4.3 Multicasting across an IPTV Network. 4.4 IPTV Multicasting Networking Architecture. 4.5 Multicasting IPTV Content across IPV6 Networks. 4.6 Introduction to Channel Changing. 4.7 Fundamentals of Channel Changing. 4.8 Techniques for Speeding up IPTV Channel Changing Times. 4.9 Discovering Channel Program Information. 4.10 Time Shifting Multicast IPTV. 4.11 Channel Changing Industry Initiatives. 4.12 Summary. Chapter 5. IPTV Consumer Devices (IPTVCDs). 5.1 About Residential Gateways. 5.2 RG Technology Architecture. 5.3 RG Functionality. 5.4 RG Industry Standards. 5.5 Introduction to Digital Set-top Boxes. 5.6 The Evolution of Digital Set-top Boxes. 5.7 Categories of Digital Set-top Boxes. 5.8 Major Technological Trends for Digital Set-Top Boxes. 5.9 IP Set-top Boxes Defined. 5.10 Types of IP Set-top Boxes. 5.11 Other Emerging IPTV Consumer Devices. 5.12 Summary. Chapter 6. IPTVCD Software Architecture. 6.1 What Makes an IPTVCD Tick? 6.2 Interactive TV Middleware Standards. 6.3 Proprietary Middleware Solutions. 6.4 Summary. Chapter 7. IPTV Conditional Access and DRM Systems. 7.1 Introduction to IPTV Security. 7.2 Defining IPTV CA Security Systems. 7.3 CA Industry Initiatives. 7.4 Introduction to Next Generation DRM Solutions. 7.5 IPTV Intranet Protection. 7.6 Summary. Chapter 8. Moving IPTV around the House. 8.1 About Whole Home Media Networking (WHMN). 8.2 WHMN Enabling Technologies. 8.3 Fast Ethernet & Gigabit Ethernet (GigE). 8.4 802.11n. 8.5 HomePlug AV. 8.6 UPA-DHS. 8.7 HomePNA(t) 3.1. 8.8 WHMN Middleware Software Standards. 8.9 QoS and WHMN Applications. 8.10 Summary. Chapter 9. Video-on-Demand (VoD) over IP Delivery Networks. 9.1 History of Pay-Per-View. 9.2 Understanding PPV. 9.3 The Emergence of RF and IP Based VoD. 9.4 Types of IP-VoD Services. 9.5 Underlying Building Blocks of an end-to-end IP-VoD Infrastructure. 9.6 Video Server Architectures. 9.7 Integrating IP-VoD Applications with other IP based Services. 9.8 Protecting IP-VoD Content. 9.9 Summary. Chapter 10. IP Based High Definition TV. 10.1 Overview of SDTV and HDTV Technologies. 10.2 HDTV over IP Defined. 10.3 An end-to-end IP HDTV System. 10.4 Summary. Chapter 11. Interactive IPTV applications. 11.1 The Evolution of iTV. 11.2 About iTV. 11.3 Interactive IPTV Applications. 11.4 IPTV Program Related Interaction Applications. 11.5 Deploying Interactive IPTV Applications. 11.6 Accessibility to IPTV Services. 11.7 Summary. Chapter 12. IPTV Network Administration. 12.1 An Introduction to IPTV Network Administration. 12.2 Supporting the IPTV Networking Management System (NMS). 12.3 Managing Installation, Service Problems, and Terminations. 12.4 Network Testing and Monitoring. 12.5 Ensuring Service Availability and Managing Redundancy. 12.6 IP Address Space Management. 12.7 Routine IT and Network Administrative Tasks. 12.8 Managing IPTV Quality of Service (QoS) Requirements. 12.9 Monitoring the IPTV Subscriber Experience. 12.10 Remotely Managing in-Home Digital Consumer Devices. 12.11 Scheduling and Managing Delivery of Software Updates to IPTVCDs. 12.12 Troubleshooting IPTV Problems. 12.13 IPTV and Business Continuity Planning. 12.14 Summary. Index.

Interactive applications that come along with 360- degree (or 360) videos have brought immersive experiences to users thanks to the elevated machine computability. In fact, the provision of such high quality of experience (QoE) hinges on the persistent delivery of 360 videos, potentially consuming an excessive need of network bandwidth. To prevent the delivery of entire 360 videos from adversely affecting QoE, tile-based viewport adaptive streaming that divides 360 video chunks into tiles and conveys streams with differentiated quality levels to viewport and non-viewport areas has been regarded as a promising solution. Existing works have been devoted to the design of 1) viewport prediction (VPP) to predict users' viewport orientation due to head movements, and 2) tile bitrate selection (TBS) to determine tile-based bitrates for viewport and non-viewport areas. Despite the heuristic solutions proposed by the existing works, there is lack of knowledge of whether QoE can be enhanced by learning from historical data. In this paper, we propose the system-Plato, to leverage machine learning to tile-based viewport adaptive streaming for 360 videos. In particular, Plato applies long short term memory (LSTM) model to VPP, and uses part of non-viewport areas to help resist prediction errors. In addition, Plato uses real-world traces to train a TBS agent based on reinforcement learning to determine tile bitrates for both viewport and non-viewport areas. Our simulation results show that Plato outperforms existing schemes in various QoE metrics.

With the advent of cloud computing and remote execution of interactive applications, there is a need for evaluating the Quality of Experience (QoE) and the influence on this QoE of network condition variations, media encoding parameter settings and related optimization algorithms. However, current QoE assessment focuses mainly on audiovisual quality in non-interactive applications, such as video-on-demand services. On the other hand, where experiments aim to quantify interactive quality, the focus is typically targeted at games, using an ad-hoc test setup to assess the impact of network variations on the playing experience. In this paper, we present a novel platform enabling the assessment of a broad range of interactive applications (e.g., thin client remote desktop systems, remotely rendered engineering applications, games). Dynamic reconfiguration of media encoding and decoding is built into the system, to allow dynamic adaptation of the media encoding to the network conditions and the application characteristics. Evaluating the influence of these automatic adaptations is a key asset of our approach. A range of possible use cases is discussed, as well as a performance study of our implementation, showing that the platform we built is capable of highly controllable subjective user assessment. Furthermore, we present results obtained by applying the platform for a subjective evaluation of an interactive multimedia application. Specifically, the influence of visual quality and frame rate on interactive QoE has been assessed for a remotely executed race game.

Online gaming, especially the new paradigm of Cloud Gaming, is advancing the state-of-the-art in interactive networked applications while creating significant business opportunities forgame providers. However, online gaming is fundamentallychallenged by network latency that impairs the interactive gamingexperience and negatively affects players' Quality of Experience(QoE). In this work, we propose a method to optimize bandwidthdistribution on the player's home network to maximize QoE without starving other concurrent applications. Our experimental resultsshow that the proposed model cuts the delay experienced by users by almost half and improves the user's QoE by enhancing game video quality.

The paper presents an efficient low cost clock recovery module used in the Set Top Box for terrestrial television. It addresses the effects of jitter on MPEG-2 Transport streams for DVB-T. Lot of research on algorithms for IP and ATM networks has been carried out but the problem for terrestrial networks has not been sufficiently addressed. These algorithms require more CPU time and involve complex calculations which are difficult to implement in set top boxes due to the real time system constraints and cost considerations. A moving window FIR filter approach has been used in our module. This module is simulated in terrestrial and satellite environment and observed that it performs efficiently under high jittery conditions. This method was also implemented on a set top box SOC (system-on-chip) and it demonstrated high performance.

This paper presents a software architecture that supports fast channel change in DVB-S/C/T set top boxes. Long channel zapping time is an issue that has been addressed first in the context of IPTV set top boxes, where it has been an obstacle for successful commercialization of IPTV. In DVB-S/C/T the channel zapping time has not been in the focus that much, but with the development of tuners and appearance of STB boards with more tuners and decoders, the conditions were made for its further reduction. The aim is to improve user's quality of experience. The properties of our architecture have been discussed both with respect to resource management and to efficient processing of callbacks and notifications. The experimental results show reduction of channel zapping time from about 3 sec, to less than 800 msec.

This article describes the architecture and design of an IPTV network monitoring system and some of the use cases it enables. The system is based on distributed agents within IPTV terminal equipment (set-top box), which collect and send the data to a server where it is analyzed and visualized. In the article we explore how large amounts of collected data can be utilized for monitoring the quality of service and user experience in real time, as well as for discovering trends and anomalies over longer periods of time. Furthermore, the data can be enriched using external data sources, providing a deeper understanding of the system by discovering correlations with events outside of the monitored domain. Four supported use cases are described, among them using weather information for explaining away the IPTV quality degradation. The system has been successfully deployed and is in operation at the Slovenian IPTV provider Telekom Slovenije.

As field trials all over Europe show, Interactive Multimedia Services (IMMS) are usually considered only for the market of private households with services like ‘Video on Demand’ and ‘Teleshopping’ via TV and Set Top Box in the living room at home.Pilot examples in Austria demonstrate that there are other ways to use the same technology to realize interactive multimedia services for private and public companies and institutions. In this respect, the customer premises equipment need not to be necessarily a TV set but might be a PC representing a ‘Point of Information’ or ‘Point of Sale’ terminal located in offices, in stores or even in schools. Calculations based on experiences with an Austrian retailer who realised an interactive application predict that by such an approach an economic break even can be reached within 2 years. In addition, a broader distribution in the market is reached much sooner than by following the approach for the households mass market.