Multicast ABR Video Delivery via Residential Gateway
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current live video delivery methods for adaptive bitrate (ABR) content face challenges in managed and unmanaged networks, including cumbersome device synergies, sub-optimal bitrate selection, high latency, and lack of policy enforcement, especially in home networks where unicast video is treated as regular internet data rather than prioritized video.
Innovation Solution
A unified ABR video delivery chain using multicast encapsulation of unicast content, prioritizing content as video over managed networks, with an ABR multicast receiver functionality on residential gateways or set-top-boxes to serve in-home devices, enabling frame-accurate bookmarking and accelerated channel changes through bi-directional multicast adaptive bit rate stream policy enforcement.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If unicast delivery is used for ABR video on managed networks, then devices can receive video content, but the video is treated as regular internet data rather than prioritized video content, resulting in sub-optimal bitrate selection and degraded user experience
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces a residential gateway as an intermediary device that receives multicast video streams from the managed network and re-delivers them as unicast ABR streams to reach devices. This intermediary enables QoS enforcement at the gateway level while maintaining ABR adaptability at the client level, resolving the contradiction between reliable QoS delivery and optimal bitrate selection.
2Reliability
If multicast delivery is used for video content, then QoS can be enforced and video prioritized, but the content must be packaged differently which makes it cumbersome to build consumption synergies across devices
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements a universal packaging approach where video content is encapsulated in a format that can be delivered via multicast to the residential gateway and then re-delivered via unicast to various types of reach devices. This multi-functional packaging enables the same content to serve multiple delivery mechanisms and device types, reducing complexity while maintaining QoS.
3Adaptability or versatility
If unicast ABR delivery is used on unmanaged networks, then devices can switch bitrate when network conditions deteriorate, but there is little QoS and available bandwidth varies, resulting in best effort delivery rather than prioritized video
Solution Approach 1:
The residential gateway acts as a mediator that receives QoS-guaranteed multicast streams from the managed network and provides ABR-adapted unicast streams to clients. This intermediary position allows the system to combine the reliability of multicast QoS delivery with the adaptability of unicast ABR bitrate switching, resolving the contradiction between bandwidth guarantee and bitrate adaptability.
4Adaptability or versatility
If channel surfing is implemented with CDN delivery, then users can access content from content delivery network, but the latency to obtain content exceeds user expectation in terms of system responsiveness
Solution Approach 1:
The system pre-positions video content at the residential gateway through multicast delivery before the user requests it. When a user wants to watch content, it is already available locally at the gateway, eliminating the need to fetch it from a remote CDN during channel changes. This preliminary action significantly reduces channel change latency while maintaining content access versatility.
Data Source
AI summary
A method of providing live adaptive bitrate (ABR) video to a premises includes receiving live ABR transport stream-based content for a channel from a content server; encapsulating transport stream (TS) packets for the content in RTP packets to form RTP content packets; encapsulating in RTP packets an aggregate manifest for a plurality of ABR streams for the content to form RTP manifest packets; multiplexing the RTP content packets and the RTP manifest packets; and transmitting the multiplexed RTP packets as a multicast stream.