High quality packet video terminal

Asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) network protocols can provide guaranteed quality of service for jitter sensitive video traffic. However current terminals (i.e., PCs, workstations) present a bottleneck since they do not provide a real time packet service. In a previous work the authors showed that a workstation terminal can introduce upto 500 ms of jitter in the video stream due to software packet handling. This report describes the design of a prototype terminal capable of supporting high quality packet video applications in real time. We describe a decentralized network terminal architecture that modifies a PC to a video terminal capable of less than 50 μs jitter. The video channel between the network interface and the video subsystem is sustained without any CPU involvement, thus allowing multitasking