A Comparison of Channel Switching Schemes for IPTV Systems

One of the main challenges in IPTV systems is the reduction of startup delays, especially in channel switchings. While this problem does not exist in traditional television, in IPTV systems it is relevant, due to bandwidth limitation as well as to buffering. This paper proposes three novel schemes for fast channel switching that reduce the occurrences of latencies caused by buffering and overlay structures. IPTV architectures can be either private or public. In private architectures, also known as commercial IPTV and owned by telecommunication providers, the size of the network limits the population served.