Distributed Content Validation
Cable and IPTV operators have always wanted to monitor a subscriber’s TV to see exactly what they are seeing. In many cases, the operator actually sends a field technician to do just that. Some operators are re-engineering consumer products to capture the video from Set-Top Boxes (STB) and re-encode a streaming video over the Internet to be watched remotely. Almost all of these existing solutions add to burgeoning operational costs, and are either resource intensive or provide only a random sampling.
IneoQuest’s VeriFrame™-Technology enabled products, Cricket FrameGrabber™ and iCMS™, provide the industry’s most cost-effective and comprehensive remote content validation solution. With this advanced solution, Cable and IPTV operators allocate STBs in their hub/edge that receive the same video signal as the subscriber. This replicates the STB in the subscriber’s location enabling the operators to watch exactly what the customer is watching. Each STB’s composite video output connects to a Cricket FrameGrabber which can:
- Tune to any channel;
- Provides a Mosaic thumbnail view for immediate visual verification, and;
- Auto-detect Black Screen, Freeze Frame, and other impairments and immediately alert the operator through email or SNMP via the iCMS.
Capturing multiple thumbnails every second, the Cricket FrameGrabber uploads these thumbnails to the iCMS for viewing and analysis. The iCMS provides a mosaic view, among others, of video thumbnails uploaded from every Cricket FrameGrabber in the network. This results in cost-effective centralized monitoring of all distributed video end points.
Via a web browser, the operator can remotely tune any STB to any channel and visually inspect the thumbnails to validate the content at the subscriber’s location. It can even tune all STBs to the same channel simultaneously to view the channel across multiple Ad zones. Providing this capability through a simple web browser is equivalent to having a multi-million dollar Headend on your desktop computer. The iCMS stores thumbnails in a database for reporting and trending applications.
Applications
- Subscriber Experience Monitoring
- Service Delivery Auditing
- Content Quality Control
Key Features
- Allows the operator to see exactly what the customer is seeing
- Provides a Mosaic thumbnail view of multiple channels for immediate visual verification
- Includes long term data storage and video thumbnail archiving for reporting and trending
- Automatically detects Video and Audio signal loss, Black Screen, Freeze Frame, and alerts the operator via SNMP or email
- Provides an intuitive web interface to tune all STBs to any channel, or schedule the channel tuning to any set of channels and STBs, eliminating cumbersome manual operations