Location from where a decoder can start decoding a media stream.
Published in Chapter:
Interactive Playout of Digital Video Streams
Samuel Rivas (LambdaStream Servicios Interactivos, Spain), Miguel Barreiro (LambdaStream Servicios Interactivos, Spain), and Víctor M. Gulías (University of A Coruña, MADS Group, Spain)
Copyright: © 2009
|Pages: 8
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-60566-014-1.ch101
Abstract
Even though digital systems have many advantages over traditional analogue systems, end users expect that they will not loose any functionality in the transition. Concretely, capabilities of video cassette recorders (VCR) should be ported to stand alone digital media players (e.g., DVD players) and streaming services (e.g., digital TV and VoD services). Those capabilities are usually known as interactive playout or, simply, digital VCR functionality. Typical VCR features are random access, pause/resume, reverse play, fast forward/ backward, and slow motion. Random access and pause/resume functionalities are relatively easy to implement in digital systems. On the other hand, video coding techniques and bandwidth restrictions severely complicate the implementation of the other VCR operations. Usually, VCR capabilities apply only to video streams. In interactive playout mode, audio streams are commonly discarded. Also, the quality of video streams in interactive mode may be downgraded due to system limitations.