At the Broadband World Forum in Brussels in early October, Jungo Ltd., part of the NDS Group, unveiled a new feature for its OpenRG™ (Residential Gateway) software that supports channel switching for IPTV providers that is much more user-friendly, and is set to improve the IPTV viewer experience significantly.

Channel switching, also called “zapping,” is the time it takes viewers to change channels using a standard remote control. “This is a major issue in the IPTV industry,” says Jungo CTO Arik Gilad. “What our solution delivers is faster, more reliable movement between channels.”

Why is channel switching so important for IPTV? “The maximum time that is considered acceptable for switching channels in the IPTV world today is two seconds. Unfortunately, in many cases IPTV can’t deliver this two seconds reliably,” Gilad says.

“Jungo’s patent-pending offering can now monitor available resources, and viewers will see the difference this makes,” Gilad says. “We are planning to deploy the fast channel switching technology in residential gateways in North America during the first half of 2009.”

“What this means is that by using the new OpenRG features, IPTV operators can offer the same channel switching user experience as that offered by cable and satellite providers,” Gilad says. “In addition, a major benefit is that this software works with any off-the-shelf IPTV set-top box (STB).”

“Jungo’s unique approach for improving channel switching speed is based on the home gateway,” Gilad says. “Because the home gateway is at the heart of the home network, this is the ideal place to implement a fast channel switching solution,” he says.

“The difficulty with most of the other solutions on the market is that they are either very expensive or they have technical drawbacks such as not being able to improve service from the headend,” he says. “In some cases, hardware companies sell a complete end-to-end system including both hardware and software. But they typically use off-the-shelf home gateways whose software is not optimised for IPTV services,” he explains. “What Jungo has done is separate the software from the hardware.”

Improving the Quality of the IPTV Experience

IPTV subscribers expect switching between hundreds of channels to be seamless. “However, in many cases they experience slow response times and sub-standard picture quality or pixelisation.” These problems tend to increase in homes with multiple STBs.

“Consider an ADSL2+ line that delivers 15 Mbit/s downstream,” Gilad says. “Typical standard definition (SD) channels operate at about 4 Mbit/s so there is no real problem zapping between several channels at the same time.”

“But once subscribers switch between four or more channels, they start to get pixelisation which is unacceptable,” he says.

“Part of the problem is that IGMP and broadcast traffic on the Internet were not designed specifically for TV,” he says. IGMP (Internet Group Management Protocol) is used to manage multicast streams for audio and video. It allows more efficient use of resources.

“The fact is that IPTV users have become accustomed to slow response times,” Gilad says. “What Jungo’s channel switching software does is act as an intelligent IGMP proxy.”

“There are a number of factors affecting channel switching that can be difficult for gateways to deal with,” he continues. “If consumers buy an off-the-shelf gateway it is likely that their broadcast IPTV may not function as well as they had expected. Even if the operator provides a tailor-made gateway for IPTV, there are often problems with channel switching,” he says.

“Jungo’s new solution improves IPTV service through intelligent gateway software. We have reduced the zapping time to a minimum while resolving the reliability issues often encountered by broadband gateways all over the world,” Gilad says.

Advantages of Jungo’s technology
                                         
What makes Jungo’s channel switching solution a real leap in technology? “We offer the ability to optimise the handling of IGMP and multicast traffic, specifically for IPTV,” he says. “In addition, we offer remote software upgrades for gateways. This is a major advantage for legacy deployments because operators can implement the upgrades as often as needed without incurring major expenses.”
 
How does this work? Jungo’s new technology removes channel-switching overheads by employing an innovative mix of tactics, including an enhancement of the regular IGMP Leave and Fast-Leave operations – otherwise known as Aggressive Leave – the monitoring of available resources such as bandwidth and virtual circuits (VCs), and intelligent bandwidth usage assumptions.

This is not just about channel switching. Support and reliability are also crucial for quality of experience. When subscribers want to begin watching content, they may find that their IPTV service is not working due to a gateway related issue such as a disconnected network cable or a gateway freeze. Without the proper support tools in place they may try to reboot and/or make an annoyed call for technical support.”

What subscribers want is a seamless experience that includes quick and easy resolution of issues if they arise. Jungo addresses this need with its Support Cost Reduction (SCR) solution which uniquely leverages the home gateway to diagnose and resolve technical issues.

“In effect Jungo offers reliability that is based on superior software which responds automatically,” Gilad says. “Off-the-shelf solutions cannot offer the same level of support that Jungo does.”

Jungo’s SCR uses the following methods to reduce support costs:

• Self-healing: Issues are fixed transparently. The subscriber is not aware there was a problem.
• Troubleshooting: If the problem cannot be solved by the self-healing features, Jungo’s intelligent gateways pinpoint the fault and guide the user through the solution step by step.
• Call shortening. Call-centre support tools provide detailed information and diagnostics on the subscriber’s home network, so once the call is made it takes a much shorter time to resolve the issue by the carrier’s or service provider’s customer support representative. 

  “What is significant about our new channel switching solution is not only that it speeds up the process but also that the only changes required are in the residential gateway, and not in any part of the end-to-end IPTV infrastructure,” Gilad explains.

“This is an important point,” he continues. “Jungo has developed a very light solution that reduces capital expenditure because no hardware has to be replaced.”

“In addition, because no changes to the operator’s headend are needed, it’s easy to deploy,” Gilad says.

Bottom line: Jungo paves the way for quick response channel switching which is essential for the IPTV user’s viewing satisfaction. In the process it has also solved a major stumbling block in the emerging IPTV market.

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