Extending the Ecosystem, 25th-27th March 2009

Welcome to the IPTV World Forum Technical Symposium. The Symposium is a new feature of the World Form for 2009, and is one of our innovations to help build the ecosystem for IPTV. The purpose of the symposium is to provide a level of technical content not previously addressed by the Forum, and to engage an even wider range of companies and personnel in the event. The content will be available to conference delegates, but will also be available to exhibition day visitors.

The Technical Symposium is presented in association with  

The Open IPTV Forum is a pan-industry initiative formed with the purpose of producing end to end specifications for IPTV, bringing the next generation of IPTV to the mass market. The Forum is fully open to participation by companies and other organisations across the communications and entertainment industries.

Today the Open IPTV Forum has 44 members who have joined the effort to develop an open, end to end specification for IPTV based upon existing technologies and open standards. The specification is intended to help streamline and accelerate deployments of IPTV technology, and will help maximise the benefits of IPTV not only for consumers, network operators, content providers and service providers, but also for consumer electronics manufacturers, IPTV-related technology vendors, and home and network infrastructure providers.

The Open IPTV Forum founding members are Ericsson, France Telecom, Nokia Siemens, Panasonic, Philips, Samsung Electronics, Sony Corporation, and Telecom Italia.

Technical Symposium Programme

Video Traffic Management For IP & IPTV

Wednesday, 25th March 2009
Uptake of internet video, on both open internet and in a managed service environment, has been explosive. This has brought huge consumer benefits, but also enormous issues of telcos, with a rapid rise in IP Video raising concerns over how they can support this new loading. How can operator best approach this load on their network? How can quality of service be effectively managed? What upgrades are required to switches? Which architectural options give the best spread of load for IP Traffic? What is the role of IMS & SPD? What is the contribution of deep packet inspection, and what the regulatory and policy implications of this technology within the net neutrality debate?

Enabling service innovation through creating an Open Application Environment for IPTV

Thursday, 26th March 2009
The first generation IPTV has largely focused on providing TV content to consumers, with on demand capability. But IPTV has much greater potential to be developed in the future. IPTV also has the opportunity to generate new revenue streams by creating a wide range of new services built on its benefits of broadband managed interactive, operator customer relationship and billing and commerce capability.

To maximise the potential for service innovation, the industry needs to engage the energy and creativity of the application development community. And to engage this community, the industry needs to create a uniform environment where APIs are clear and easy to interact with, and service can be “write once, run anywhere”, creating as large as possible a market. What further evolution is required in IPTV to make this happen?

EPG 2.0: Content Search & Discovery

Friday, 27th March 2009
The modern TV consumer is starting to face a crisis of choice. As the consumer is offered greater and greater range of programming, they can increasingly face a challenge in locating their preferred programming, or of discovering new programming that might be of interest. A contemporary EPG in a modern multi-channel environment can hold information on upwards of 1000 programmes for a single coming week. The capability of a PVR to record a series can increasing programme loyalty, but can conversely encourage an entrenchment of viewing habits. What can the industry learn from successful internet examples such as recommendation engines and social networking references for make it easier to consumers to engage with a wider range of content?