As demand for rich media and TV content continues to grow among consumers, the delivery of digital video at an acceptable quality of experience for the user becomes ever more important to service providers, content owners, and equipment vendors whose infrastructure underpins the networks, according to the latest report from Light Reading Insider.

IPTV & Digital Video QoE: Test & Measurement Update analyzes the technical challenges in measuring a user's digital video QoE, comparing alternative technologies and summarizing work on standardization. It explains how different approaches are needed at different points in the lifecycle of a digital video service and picks out some of the key trends in this evolving market. This report identifies and compares the differences between vendors, including those with T&M, service assurance, TV, and telecom heritages, and profiles 17 of the leading players in this fragmented and complex market space.

The core issue is how to gather, combine, and use data to predict and evaluate QoE at various stages of a service lifecycle, Dicks notes. "Service providers and broadcasters have evolved numerous ways to this, bearing in mind the constraints they face," he says. "Measuring users' QoE, though, is a technical challenge: What is needed is to identify the right combination of measurable attributes of the network and application, and the right way of combining them, at the appropriate points in the life cycle of the service, and the right points in the network."

Key findings of IPTV & Digital Video QoE: Test & Measurement Update include:

• Consumer expectations of IPTV and other digital video services are growing, and service providers are looking to meet QoE expectations to attract subscribers and minimize churn.
• Predicting the quality of a video requires a complex assessment of network transmission and application-layer parameters, combined in a way that models human perception
• There are several competing technologies for measuring digital video QoE; application-layer metrics are becoming more significant
• Standardization is running behind the industry's need for effective solutions
• Vendors from both the TV and telecom industries are converging on the QoE test and measurement space
• Continuous monitoring is increasingly required as services bed down

IPTV & Digital Video QoE: Test & Measurement Update is available as part of an annual single-user subscription (12 monthly issues) to Light Reading Insider, priced at $1,595. Individual reports are available for $900 (single-user license).