Buffer-Based Low-Delay Playout Control Methods for IPTV Terminals

IPTV (Internet protocol television) terminals have a large receiving buffer for IP networks with large delay jitter. However the large buffer for jitter would cause large delay in playout. In this paper, we propose novel methods to achieve low-delay playout for IPTV terminals even in large-jitter networks. To minimize buffering time of received data in an IPTV terminal, the buffering time should be the same amount as the maximum jitter only when the lowest delayed data is received. Under above condition, we determine the time of starting playout by utilizing only the lowest delayed data. Also, in order to keep low-delay playout, we control playout clock using the maximum occupancy of the receive buffer. Compared with other solutions proposed earlier to address network delay jitter, our proposal is focused particularly on providing features including low delay playout, applicability to large delay jitter, adjustment of processing workload (low processing cost), safe control without buffer underflow, and resilience against discontinuous packet loss.