Diamond project: Video‐on‐demand system, and trials

Abstract

Abstract The DIAMOND project (Domestic IBC Applications for Multimedia on Demand; IBC = Integrated Broadband Communications), sponsored by the EC (RACE R2105), had the objective of exploring and demonstrating the technical feasibility of providing Video On Demand (VOD) to the home, with an acceptable quality of service at an acceptable cost level. Within Philips, a Video Server (VS) and Set Top Box (STB) were developed, while Octacon developed a Service Gateway (SGW). The system was tested on both a public switched network using ADSL (Helsinki, Finland) and on a CATV network (Sligo, Ireland); both trials were of a small scale and free 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.