DIAMOND-PROJECT - VIDEO-ON-DEMAND SYSTEM, AND TRIALS

The DIAMOND project (Domestic IBC Applications for Multimedia on Deman d; IBC = Integrated Broadband Communications), sponsored by the EC (RA CE R2105), had the objective of exploring and demonstrating the techni cal feasibility of providing Video On Demand (VOD) to the home, with a n acceptable quality of service at an acceptable cost level. Within Ph ilips, a Video Server (VS) and Set Top Box (STB) were developed, while Octacon developed a Service Gateway (SGW). The system was tested on b oth a public switched network using ADSL (Helsinki, Finland) and on a CATV network (Sligo, Ireland); both trials were of a small scale and f ree of charge. The purpose of this paper is to present an overview of the overall system as developed for the DIAMOND trials, together with user evaluation results from the Helsinki trial.