coverstory_cover story 26/11/2014 18:57 Page 5
content and the only way they will succeed is
for that content to arrive at the display
device so that it is of a quality that satisfies
the customer. Does that mean we need
flawless 1080p to a smart phone? Maybe not
today, but possibly in the future. All service
providers build in buffers and software
to ensure that the content flows and
meets their respective requirements.
Many hours of T&M go into achieving a
final product before it is installed in the
customer’s home or handheld device.
Once the hardware and associated
control and display software are
established, then the quality shifts to the
creation of the content and the
compression used to move it efficiently
over the network. There are many points
that need constant quality control to
insure the delivery of all content. From
the origins to the editing, compression,
transmission systems, DRM, selection
control, decompression, conversion and
display, all are potential points of failure
that can cause a less then desirable
result.
Rohde & Schwarz: It is not possible to
guarantee complete error-free content
representation in an unmanaged
network. However, if sufficient
monitoring data is gathered throughout
the network, potential errors could be
identified early.
S3: By definition, the CPE is the final
stage in delivering content to consumers
and consequently plays a fundamental
and irreplaceable role in maintaining
QoE to the end consumer. The best
headends and the highest quality
delivery networks will be irrelevant if the
final stage in the delivery, the CPE, is
performing poorly. We are seeing operators
around the world deploying a combination of
gateways and thin clients around their
customer’s homes, with support for
multiscreen mobile devices via the managed
network to the home in all cases and via
unmanaged networks outside the home in
many cases. Testing of these complex multi-
question is that by mining that data, can you
improve the service quality? Per