Video over IP - Design Issues

H.323 vs. RealVideo et. al.

• Commercial solutions exist for streaming video over IP networks, including:
  • Progressive Networks' RealVideo
  • Xing Technology's StreamWorks
  • VDOnet's VDOLive
  • Vosaic
  • VXtreme
  • Vivoactive
  • Microsoft's NetShow
  • H.323
• RealNetworks is pretty compelling
  • Servers exist
  • Supports ASF
  • What is the real video quality on an un-loaded 10Mb/s network?
  • Lots of software, but not targeted at VOD (what about billing, etc.)?
• H.323 provides great interoperability with IP telephony, videoconferencing
  • Servers don't exist
  • Hardware codecs with video I/O exist
  • Most all components exist, but what amount of S/W needs to be written?
• Take the engineer's approach -- demo and compare video quality
  • on an un-loaded 10Base-T network
  • with multiple streams (up to 50% bandwidth utilization)
  • which one is cheaper out-of-the-box?
• Evaluate
  • Video quality (on a TV)
    • degradation vs. bit rate
    • degradation vs. bandwidth utilization
  • Interoperability with H.323 telephony
  • Ease of server implementation
    • number of multiple streams
    • multicast
  • Ease of client implementation
  • Ease of gateway (tracking/billing/PMS interface) implementation
  • Ease of TV/display interface design/implementation
  • Cost of H/W, S/W, everything else
    • What software already exists?