http://www.hanasystec.com/html_h/board/data/iptv%20system-by%20hana%20systec%20co.,ltd.pdf
Following is a typical bill of material for IPTV service (20K subs with 4K simultaneous sessions). Here the IMCS (Integrated management control system) or middleware takes care of the total IPTV control and provisioning. Also provides the CRM interfaces. But SMS (subscriber management system) and SAS (Subscriber Authentication server) would also be part of middleware, no? If the broadcasting center and data centers can be clearly differentiated as follows, then it will throuh-up lot of possiblity for mix and match in the IPTV industry i.e., if one plays offer to connect their streaming distribution servers on multiple network operator’s network, then multiple broadcast centers would be able to provide services to subscribers residing on different networks. So essentially again the network operators would become bit pipe providers.
Encoder (H264 (MPEG 4 part 10) or MPEG-2) feeds the digital content to the streamer that can stream the video/audio onto the network. Now this streamer should be able to stream onto the wireless or on the wireline infrastructure. The way it should be streamed on wireless would be definetly will have to take care of the bandwidth limitation and the latency. But before the content enters the encoder it might have received either from live feed receiver or from stored video/audio content. The ad insertion would have to be done in either of these content sources.
Typical dimensioning requirements are:
- Total number of IPTV subscribers – gives the license required for the middleware
- Support X number of live TV channels
- x% of VOD subscribers in total subscribers
- VOD server requirements – x number of concurrent streams, total storage for x hours
- CA/DRM – number of subscribers and how many channel scrambler
- How many E.264 encoders (1:1 ratio with channels + redundancy), IP streamers
- Whether the access network supports the required bandwidth
