SaskTel will commercially deploy xVu, Mariner's revolutionary IPTV Service Assurance platform. xVu will be deployed across SaskTel's 70,000+ Max Entertainment Services (IPTV) customers to provide continuous monitoring and real time feedback of customer's Quality of Experience. The platform will allow SaskTel to proactively manage its IPTV service quality, and to identify and resolve issues often before the customer even realizes there is a problem. xVu monitors QoE of IPTV services during installation, supporting a 'right first time' approach. Post-installation, xVu enables network and customer support personnel to proactively monitor IPTV service delivery and resolve issues, the majority of time before a call has been received from any customers.

Occam Networks takes a leading role in the development of Quality of Experience and Quality of Service recommendations for the deployment of IPTV over DSL. The Broadband Forum’s Technical Report 176, “ADSL2Plus Configuration Guidelines for IPTV” co-editor and contributor Dov Zimring also serves as Occam’s Director of Strategic Technology and Solutions.

Telchemy announces the availability of SQlive, a breakthrough IPTV and IP Videoconferencing performance monitoring application. SQlive is unique in its ability to measure the performance of scrambled/ encrypted IP Video streams, producing Video MOS scores and a wide range of diagnostic metrics; SQlive is compact enough to be easily integrated into IP Set Top Boxes but powerful enough to monitor large numbers of high definition IPTV streams.

Jungo releases its OpenRG residential gateway software now supports a patent-pending, fast channel-switching feature. This solution enables service providers to enhance consumers’ IPTV experience by improving the channel-switching performance of broadband access equipment.

Subscriber Quality of Experience is critical to the success of an IPTV service. While there are many factors affecting IPTV service quality – such as picture quality, transport and reliability – a key QoE element is how quickly and reliably subscribers can change TV channels.

At IBC 2008, BitBand will demonstrate how the company is increasing IPTV adoption among existing and new deployments by catering to scalability and growth demands with a differentiated offering focused on a quality viewing and entertainment experience. Visitors will see how BitBand's scalable intelligent Content Delivery Network and new QualiCTV Quality-of-Experience IPTV solution for fast channel change, provide a cost-effective path for scaling up IPTV services for both on-demand and broadcast content to IPTV service providers all over the world.

Digital Rapids has released a powerful new version of the Digital Rapids Broadcast Manager enterprise-class live encoder management software. Digital Rapids Broadcast Manager provides robust management, monitoring and fault tolerance for multiple live streaming encoders. New features in version 1.3 the second significant update this year includes:

Find out after the jump.

Telcos that are investing heavily in IPTV infrastructure and services to drive new revenues also need to ensure that tools and technologies are in place to monitor their customers' quality of experience with their video services – but telcos aren't sure that today's IPTV QOE test and measurement tools provide the right level of service monitoring, according to a major new report from Heavy Reading.

IPTV Phase II: QOE Is Mission Critical identifies and analyzes the core issues involved in determining QOE for IPTV services. The report explores the issues that affect how to objectively determine QOE in a way that it reflects the subscriber's subjective point of view. It identifies and evaluates key standards and sets out the most likely timetable for the emergence of standards that would give service providers greater confidence in choosing solutions for measuring the quality of their TV services.

Host: Sam Masud, Senior Analyst, Heavy Reading

Original Webinar Date: Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Original Webinar Time: 2:00 p.m. New York / 7:00 p.m. London

Overview: Telcos are putting money on the table with high hopes of challenging the traditional TV providers. By delivering TV channels over an IP network, telcos expect to have a more cost-effective business model that will also result in increased revenues. But if they are to be successful, telcos will have to provide IPTV services that, at a minimum, are as good as what subscribers have become accustomed to. This is why IPTV vendors of all sorts are talking about Quality of Experience, or QOE.

You can view the archive via this link: http://metacast.agora.com/link.asp?m=50137&s=7443657&l=0

IneoQuest opened its Central European Cable and IPTV Technology Center in Rosenheim, Germany. The facility will assist and enable network operators in the deployment and management of advanced Quality of Service solutions for digital cable and IPTV networks.

Designed to emulate an actual video head-end, the Rosenheim Center is a hands-on, demonstration and technology training facility that enables cable and telecommunications network operators to learn about the QOS challenges they face, especially as they transition to video-over-IP backbones. The Rosenheim Center also provides an ideal staging ground for technical on-site trials, where pilot technologies can be evaluated in a safe, controlled environment before being actively deployed in live customer environments.

Tele2 selects Digital Fountain’s ToughStream Solution to further improve their IPTV service. After successful trials, ToughStream is now live and operational on Tele2’s IPTV network, providing protection against “glitches,” or visible errors that naturally occur when delivering real-time media over IP networks.

ToughStream is a software solution that eliminates video and audio degradation caused by packet loss, latency or out-of-order delivery. These effects are normal and prevalent conditions on all IP networks because IP is, by design, a “best effort” delivery protocol. Because it is a software-based solution, ToughStream is highly configurable, and easy to deploy on any IPTV network. An extraordinarily scalable solution, ToughStream has negligible hardware requirements while providing high QoE including fast channel change times.

SureWest Communications has selected and deployed IneoQuest service probes as part of its ongoing commitment to provide outstanding quality of experience to the large video subscriber base of its SureWest Broadband subsidiaries in the Sacramento region. SureWest initially relied upon IneoQuest's award-winning Singulus Lite Cricket service probe to help evaluate and test video performance on the SureWest Broadband IP Video vendor equipment in its test labs. These IneoQuest products also have played an active role in the evaluation performance testing of hardware from such vendors as Occam, Allied Telesyn and Cisco.

OPTICOM unleashes www.PEVQ.org, the new test & measurement industry's market overview on Video QoE Testing. The new web portal comprises an up-to-date listing on commercially available video quality testing tools which can analyze the picture quality for video telephony, Mobile TV and IPTV by providing a MOS score, just as subscribers would perceive the quality of a service.

OPTICOM's Perceptual Evaluation of Video Quality, a patented technology proposed for international standardization, measures degradations occurring through a network by analyzing the degraded video signal output from the network. QoE testing is based on modeling the behavior of the human visual system and besides the overall quality abnormalities in the video signal are quantified by a variety of KPIs, including PSNR, distortion indicators and lip-sync delay.

Digital Fountain releases a new version of its ToughStream solution, which ensures end-to-end quality of service for IPTV networks. ToughStream 2.0, which will be released in January 2008, provides enhanced deployment flexibility for IPTV service providers, enabling them to “surgically” insert protection only where needed without any impact on areas of the network or subscriber nodes that are already performing to required service levels. The ability to strategically insert protection lowers deployment costs and reduces operational complexities stemming from system-wide upgrades that would otherwise be required. This is particularly important for operators who maintain several different set-top-box models and configurations.

Spirent announced the ability to conduct IP video quality testing on its Tech-X Plus. With this new feature, Spirent enables field technicians to verify IPTV subscribers’ Quality of Experience by measuring both the transport network and video content. This provides a more thorough service quality measurement and an accurate indication of the subscribers’ viewing experience.

JDSU introduces new IPTV and quad-play enhancements to NetComplete, as well as new features to the PVA-1000, a software component of its service assurance solutions portfolio specializing in VoIP analysis using remote software capture agents. The new additions address the growing network operator demand for in-depth, accurate measurements and end-to-end performance monitoring to ensure quality IPTV, VoIP and other quad-play service delivery.