Semantic IPTV Service Discovery System

IPTV deals with multimedia services delivered over IP based networks managed to provide the required level of quality of service and experience, security, interactivity and reliability. Service discovery is an important component of IPTV system, but it is challenging due to the unique domain specifics of IPTV and complexities of IPTV ecosystem. In this paper, we formulate the IPTV service discovery problem under an SOA framework, and propose a novel standards-based semantic IPTV service discovery system. The proposed system is based on unifying the traditionally step-wise iterative process of IPTV service discovery, and a semantic integration of service provider and IPTV service descriptions. For demonstration, we consider a specific discovery scenario involving service providers that offer a combination of standard TV services such as linear TV and VoD content, and also advanced interactive multimedia-based IPTV services. With detailed illustration, we demonstrate that our proposed system provides simple but effective discovery of IPTV services, and possesses several benefits that can potentially enhance end-user experience.