In conjunction with the NAB Show this week in Las Vegas, MobiTV has unveiled an enhanced version of its Optimized Delivery Server designed for the distribution of live, clip-linear, video on demand (VOD) and downloadable media over broadband and wireless networks. The updated content-delivery technology is intended to optimize network use and the user experience for mobile television.

While typically known for unicasting real-time television over operators’ networks, MobiTV’s new RTP/RTSP- and 3GPP-compliant server combines unicast and multicast distribution methods into a single delivery platform. The technology is integrated into MobiTV’s end-to-end managed hosted service, the Connected Media Solutions and is now available for licensing to partners and clients wanting to enter the mobile TV market over their existing network architectures.

“What is we are saying is that you can now buy our ODM server and get its feature sets,” said Kay Johansson, CTO of MobiTV. “We are not changing MobiTV to be a software company; we are just adding a mix to it. We can help you get content or sell ads, since it’s another component to what we are doing. I think it is going to be a strategic right step for us. I think it’s the next evolution. Even if we have customers today running complete end-to-end managed services, it makes sense to go there.”

Using network resources through the creation of a distributed network, the platform is intended to decrease backhaul, offer comprehensive usage reporting, fully redundant architecture and support for all devices. The Optimized Delivery Server will also improve the user experience through bandwidth smoothing, seamless network handover and bandwidth adaptation through stream switching, thinning and rate shaping.

As the backhaul limits are being tested by increased cell phone usage of services like mobile TV, Johansson said that the server’s support for both multicast and unicast delivery will offer more flexibility in how the network resources are used without channel lineup limitations.


“You have all these issues with fluctuated networks, up and down in bit rate and going through tunnels,” Johansson said. “How do we lower the cost of distributing media? I think you’ve heard the problem with video is that it’s congesting the network — it is not really congesting the cell sites. You have a lot of bandwidth, but the real problem is usually backhaul. We are close to 4 million subscribers today; we run the biggest service in the world around this, so we have to solve the backhaul thing to lower the cost and make it financially viable.”

To address the backhaul issue, he said the service is designed to live outside of the data center. To optimize bandwidth in the backhaul, MobiTV only delivers content to the sectors of the market that demand it. Furthermore, partners and clients who license the technology can adapt their networks as their business grow, starting with a single cluster in a data center and adding additional clusters in network nodes as needed.

At this year’s CES show, MobiTV announced it would add A-VSB to its list of support of multicast technologies, entering the space as a business model partner. Part of this support was to include experimenting with targeted advertising and interactivity, a facet of mobile TV that the new server will open up in the form of targeted advertising inserts and personalization options. This includes in-stream insertion for live and clip-linear content and post- and preroll ad placements in VOD and downloaded content. Personalized, targeted ads — still somewhat farther down most carriers’ business plans — can be delivered to specific users based on a submitted profile.

While the business model is a source of consternation for carriers, a primary gripe of mobile TV users it the slow transition time between channels, and as a video begins on unicast, it often incurs a delay of up to 15 seconds on a wireless network. MobiTV’s latest incarnation of the delivery server allows for faster session starts and channel changes. Johansson said that the new technology would make it possible to change channels in less than one second.

Johansson also said that the offer has the potential to expand into three screens — from the wireless to the PC and even television, over IPTV. MobiTV’s goal is not to help companies with their content, he said. Rather, it is to enable the technology to distribute over IP networks.

Thus far, adoption of mobile TV has been rather limited in the United States, with the service only available to a limited number of handsets and providers struggling to find the right business model. Johansson said that every time MobiTV increases the usability of its service, it sees an uptake in usage. “We know the interest is there; it is more about the quality,” he said. “The quality of the content is very important as well.”