Open IPTV Forum Publishes Profiles Specification for Release 1

The Open IPTV Forum (OIPF)--an industry group that is attempting to bring together telcos, consumer electronics manufacturers, and network infrastructure providers, in order to develop specifications for an open, end-to-end solution that will facilitate development and deployment of interactive, personalized IPTV services (note: the organization, whose founding members include Ericsson, FT Group, Nokia Siemens, Panasonic, Philips, Samsung, Sony and Telecom Italia, recently published the Architecture Specification for IPTV infrastructure elements and services to be included in Release 2 of its OIPF Specifications--see the article published on itvt.com, September 8th)--announced last week that it has published the Profiles specification for its Release 1 IPTV Solution. The specification is accompanied by a revision (Version 1.1) of the seven-volume Release 1 IPTV Solution specification, which was originally published in January. All OIPF specifications are available for free download from the Publications section of the organization's Web site, oipf.tv.

According to the OIPF, the OIPF Release 1 Version 1.1 IPTV Solution provides the specification for an end-to-end platform for the deployment of the set of Release 1 IPTV services. The OIPF has developed an end-to-end solution which it says is designed to allow any consumer end-device, compliant to the OIPF specifications, to access enriched and personalized IPTV services in either a managed or non-managed network. Version 1.1 of the Release 1 Solution, the organization says, includes updates, clarifications and corrections to the previous version, which it says are the result of extensive review and feedback from companies that have implemented the specification.

The OIPF says that its Release 1 Version 1.1 IPTV Solution specification provides multiple options for some features. The Profiles specification is intended to complement the IPTV Solution specification by defining OIPF implementation and deployment profiles that remove uncertainty about what features are required in an implementation. According to the OIPF, the Profiles specification defines three profiles, which progressively add functionality from within the IPTV Solution specification:

• The Open Internet Profile, which is intended for over-the-top (OTT) services that do not utilize any terminal management features, to deliver on-demand and interactive services.
• The Baseline Managed Profile, which is designed to add support for Scheduled Content and Streamed CoD (Content on Demand) services making use of certain managed-network capabilities for content delivery.
• The Enhanced Managed Profile, which is billed as adding native support for advanced converged services and networks, through features such as IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem) and Technical Reference-069-based remote management, among others.

The OIPF says that any implementation based on the Release 1 IPTV Solution specification must adhere to one of these profiles in order to claim OIPF compliance (it adds that the profiles' names "are used for purposes of technical documentation and, as such, are not intended to be used for any logo mark or similar purpose"). According to the organization, the Profiles specification is expected to be used as a key input to the interoperability and certification programs that it will define for the Release 1 Solution. It says that early implementations of equipment based on these profiles are expected to be used at the OIPF Interoperability Event next month. "This is a major step for the Open IPTV Forum as it brings us one step closer to the reality of having implementations of our specifications," OIPF chair, Yun Chao Hu, said in a prepared statement. "With almost all the major CE vendors represented in the Forum, we have every expectation that we shall see the Forum's specifications implemented in CE devices in the coming years. I am particularly pleased to note that the Open Internet Profile is an industry first, in defining a standard way to access media portals on the Internet."