ETV Performance Assurance Becomes Priority for MSOs

ETV Performance Assurance Becomes Priority for MSOs

Comprehensive Reporting On Performance of Highly Complex EBIF Functionalities Is now in Reach

As the cable industry accumulates ever more evidence confirming the monetizing power of enhanced television technology, there’s nothing more vital to success than a rigorous means of ensuring that the complex processes underlying ETV work as intended.

Understandably MOSs have been heavily focused on preparing headends and provisioning set-tops to support the applications made possible by the Enhanced TV Binary Interchange Framework (EBIF). But now, as early commercial implementation begin to validate expectations, it’s none too soon to be thinking about what will be required to verify performance and service availability when high volumes of precisely timed apps are routinely inserted into scores of advertising and programming segments every day.
Fortunately, a solution is at hand. Mixed Signals, working closely with industry engineers, has put its extensive service monitoring know-how to work in developing an EBIF performance assurance platform which soon will be ready for implementation.

The technical capabilities required to meet the stringent EBIF requirements are already embodied in the Sentry system Mixed Signals has developed for other cable applications, including the even more complex tru2way processes. Sentry-based products provide managers, engineers and technicians access to 60-day historical and aggregated (roll-up) reports driven by a local relational database for immediate performance assessment and troubleshooting. The new EBIF performance assurance platform represents a relatively straight-forward extension of Sentry’s tru2way monitoring capabilities, which have been field proven over the past few years.

The EBIF Challenge

The scope of the EBIF performance assurance challenge becomes apparent when one considers what happens when an application is used to enhance the viewer’s engagement with just a single 30-second commercial. Let’s say, for example, that a nationally distributed ad allows EBIF-equipped operators to deliver a version of the ad that features a prompt asking if the viewer would like to see information on purchase discounts, free samples or other interactive options.

The prompt is timed to follow an introductory message appearing a few seconds into the ad. When the user clicks on the prompt with the select button on the remote control, an overlay view describing the options on the offer (information package or coupon sent directly to the address on file) appears with instructions to confirm with another click. This segment of the application is timed to disappear when no selection is made, or an event will take place when the option is selected (i.e. “Thank you for your order.”) with the ad continuing to appear on the screen throughout that viewer’s experience.

Often the programmer has contracted to pay the operator for adding the ETV component to that ad, possibly with a bonus percentage if the enhancement generates a desired reaction on the part of the viewer. In such cases, the operator must be able to verify that every process associated with that ad occurs according to plan. The operator must know that the correct applications and triggers were delivered in the transport stream at the right time and the right place for execution.

Clearly, traditional generators of performance metrics that focus on measuring the bit rate or drop packets are not comprehensive enough for monitoring application performance. Such a system doesn’t tell the operator whether the right applications and event triggers are associated with the right program at the right time and the right place for execution.

Clearly, traditional generators of performance metrics that focus on measuring the bit rate or drop packets are not comprehensive enough for monitoring application performance. Such a system doesn’t tell the operator whether the right applications and event triggers are associated with the right program at the right time. For example, you would not want a car information package to appear on a pizza commercial. Traditional metrics also fail to report the content of the applications and triggers which need to be validated to ensure that every event runs correctly (i.e. no packet drop but the payload was corrupted). Equally important, it does not help engineers identify where the problem lies if everything isn’t working properly.

By gaining a general working knowledge of the ETV architecture and processes, operations managers can secure themselves against underestimating what needs to be done. Fundamentally they need to be sure that any monitoring and reporting solution they choose is capable of monitoring and reporting at the content level to make the tool useful.

Applications and Signal Monitoring

EBIF relies on the fact tat MPEG-2 transport streams can accommodate distribution of application data through use of registration descriptors placed in program management tables (PMT’s) that indicate the packet identifier (PID) locations of specific app streams. In addition, EBIF uses a specially designated MPEG-2 data stream, known as the ETV Integrated Signaling Stream (EISS), to send the signals that trigger various events associated with each application.

This allows for a great degree of flexibility for application ingestion and insertion by cable and broadcast networks, programming aggregators, broadcast affiliates or cable operators or by combinations of these entities in joint initiatives. This architecture provides maximum flexibility for designing applications to fit a wide range of programmer and cable operator service goals and advertising models. But, of course, it adds to the complexity of any efforts to provide comprehensive performance assurance.

There are two components that are critical to normal operations of an ETV applications. The first is the application data PID, which contains the module files that comprise the complete application. The other is the signaling PID (EISS) for each specific ETV event that triggers transmission of an app module to a set-top and tells the EBIF user agent in the set-top box when to run that module.

All facets of the prescribed contents of these two major components must be monitored across all points in the distribution chain. And performance data must be aggregated to provide a holistic view that allows the operator to determine its performance.

From the applications side, the performance monitoring system must ensure that all the modules associated with an application are present in the transport stream so they can be executed correctly. There can be two or three dozen applications files associated with an application, and each of these must be monitored to determine whether every filed is delivered uncorrupted on schedule.