Introduction and Backgrounder: The number of mobile devices in the home is exploding. Most “Pay TV” operators (like Comcast Xfinity, Verizon FioS, and AT&T U-Verse) are supporting multiple screen viewing as part of their “TV Everywhere” services. The content is mostly OTT VoD, video clips, or real time sporting events available by subscription (e.g. MLB.TV, NHL.com or ESPN3) that’s played on mobile devices, gaming consoles and even connected TVs. In almost all cases, the in-home WiFi network delivers the streaming video content to the “second screen.” Mobile devices will not likely use 3G/4G wireless access to watch videos, because that would consume a good chunk of the wireless subscribers monthly data plan. Some second screens, like the Kindle Fire and iPod Touch, only use WiFi for wireless communications. Furthermore, there is no charge for WiFi home video distribution (other than the OTT subscriptions the user has with the video streaming provider, e.g. MLB.TV, Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu+, Apple TV, etc). Most Wi-Fi home network implementations are optimized for best effort, peak data rate streaming. However, video is very sensitive to packet loss, latency and jitter, which results in artifacts on the consumers’ second screens (How many times have you noticed the OTT […]
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