The case for real time MPEG testing

MPEG2 and associated standards such as DVB and ATSC require not just a new terminology but also completely new methods of test and measurement. When several pieces of compression equipment refuse to work together it is not always clear where the fault lies. Although off-line analysis can be used for development, real time monitoring analysis is needed in the field. This paper gives a brief guide to ideal MPEG testing and monitoring, with suggested configurations, at all levels from multi-transport stream bouquets right down to the macroblock level video coding decisions. The test and measurement of networks, multiplexers, encoders, decoders and receivers is addressed and a list of service information (SI) which need monitoring is given