VIDEO ON DEMAND - ARCHITECTURE, SYSTEMS, AND APPLICATIONS

This article describes video on demand (VOD) and near video on demand (NVOD) and explains the differences between the various types of VOD s ystems as they relate to telephone company (Telco), commmunity antenna or cable television (CATV), cellular TV, and hotel applications. Syst em similarities of the various carriers are described, with the intent to identify as much common equipment as possible that will be compati ble across the various applications. Basic VOD functional requirements are also discussed. Hotel VOD systems are really small CATV or Telco systems that can be expanded into full-size, commercially viable VOD s ystems easily because of their scalable architecture. The roles of ima ge compression, video-friendly disk-storage systems, video servers, en cryption, switching, transmission, and control-system elements in this VOD application are also discussed.