Comparing MPEG AVC and SVC for adaptive HTTP streaming

Adaptive video streaming over HTTP is fast becoming a preferred way for delivering on-demand as well as live video service. The MPEG committee is finalizing a standard for Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (DASH) and there is significant industry interest in this solution. DASH assumes/specifies MPEG AVC for content delivery. We analyze the use of MPEG scalable video coding (SVC) for adaptive streaming applications taking the end-to-end service delivery costs into consideration. Our models show that service delivery with SVC costs more and the costs may not outweigh the single bit stream representation and flexibility of SVC for most applications.