qarvaB2708_4k 01/09/2015 12:00 Page 1
4K UHD OTT over 4,000 km...
Degradation by distance is a problem for all OTT providers and 4K UHD will
the biggest challenge yet, but Qarva has an answer.
TT video on demand
services such as Netflix
and Prime have seen
OTT steal a march on other
transmission paths by providing
4K UHD options today. However,
they are doing so by using
multiple CDNs and, even
then, providing a
maximum
performance of about
15Mb/s.
As 4K UHD
becomes more popular
and, therefore, more
demanded by the
subscribers of all OTT
providers – including
for live streaming –
then degradation becomes a problem that
only mass deployment of CDNs can resolve,
until now.
At IBC Qarva (Stand 14.E30) will be
demonstrating the transmission of the
Eutelsat 4K UHD show channel from its
headquarters in Tbilisi, Georgia, to
Amsterdam using a single server. The
transmission stream will be at the full
30Mb/s available from Eutelsat and will
look indistinguishable from the satellite
signal received on a dish in Tbilisi, despite
an onward journey of 4,000 kilometres over
the open Internet.
This is made possible by Qarva’s aQua
video server using its proprietary MultiPipe
protocol.
The server
‘splits’ the
original
stream up
and
delivers it
via up to 32
separate,
persistent,
O
TCP connections all the way to the
client device. Each stream is
typically 1-1.5Mb/s so an
aggregated stream of 4045Mb/s is easily achievable.
On the client – in the case of
IBC, a Smart TV – sits
more Qarva
proprietary
software that
aggregates those
connections to
render the
original
stream at its
full original
bandwidth, or
at the
maximum
bandwidth allowed by the local connection
if that is lower.
So, the viewer sees
the original content in
the same quality as it
arrived at the CDN
server and, for live TV,
with a delay of only
about two seconds
even over a 4,000
kilometre journey.
Unlike HLS, which
delivers 10 second
packets of data and, therefore,
can have a ‘to live’ delay of up
to 30 seconds as packets catch
up, MultiPipe’s concurrent
multiple connections means
the data arrives for aggregation at the client
in the near real time.
And the provider only has to use one
CDN server; the aQua. And aQua runs on
any standard Linux server such as an HP380
or Dell. As with all Qarva’s products legacy
integration has been considered from the
outset; Qarva MultiPipe can be integrated as
a proxy agent on older platforms on the end
"Eutelsat 4K UHD live
streamed over 4,000Km to
IBC."
"aQua runs on any
standard Linux server."
14 EUROMEDIA UHD Special
user device with the aggregated video stream
output to the device’s legacy player as HTTP
video stream or HLS video stream.
George Mikeladze, CEO and founder of
Qarva says: “We are dedicated to making
OTT every bit as good and enjoyable an
experience for the viewer as ‘regular’ digital
broadcast television. To this end, we have
spent many years developing technology
solutions that improve the Quality of
Experience (QoE) of OTT.”
“This is particularly important with 4K
UHD where OTT is ahead of the game
because of VoD services like Netflix and
Amazon. Now Qarva technologies mean live
linear 4K UHD can be taken from source
and streamed over the Internet to
subscribers all over the world in original
quality and all from one server.”
“This is not a Peer-to-Peer solution, it
does not carry an overhead for the
subscriber’s bandwidth,
the signal is actually
split over many
concurrent connections
then reassembled by the
cl Y[