IPTV, video and display quality

Right quality is cost effective

Do you have the right quality of your IPTV-service? Find the right balance between quality and cost.

Acreo is one of the leaders in standardization of video and display quality for present and future broadband networks. We also offer controlled user studies of display and video quality as well as lighting measurements. Next generation screens with 3D presentations are also among our areas of expertise.

Interesting reading

Read more about compression/coding for 3DTV and get an overview of MPEG standards. http://www.motorola.com/staticfiles/Video-Solutions/3D-TV/pdf/WP_MPEG_Standards_for_3DTV.pdf

Standardization development for 3DTV

3D is now established at the movies and is more profitable than traditional 2D movies. The development for 3DTV has not been that successful yet. There could be several explanations to that. The current lack of content is probably one of them. Another is the lack of common agreed international standards. In this latter area Acreo has during 2011 been involved in projects that could make important progresses for 3DTV standards.

One of the 3D projects is from the Moving Pictures Experts Group (MPEG). MPEG is an organization that standardized video codec or compression techniques and has had great success with standards both for digital standard TV and HDTV. They are now working towards the next generation 3D video codes.

Video quality tests

In the process MPEG has issued a call for proposal, which is a kind of competition to find the best performing compression algorithms for this purpose. In order to evaluate the performances of the submitted algorithm 3D video quality data was decided to be collected. Experiments with normal viewers were performed at laboratories all over the world. Acreo was one of 12 labs performing video quality tests. The test result indicates that a clear quality improvement was achieved by many proposals, as compared to earlier coding standards. A new video codec standard could be expected earliest in a couple of years.

Cooperation with TCO Development

One other project in this area that Acreo has been involved in during 2011 is in the development of the visual ergonomic requirements for a new display label from TCO Development, targeting 3DTV. These are new products for the customers with new strength and weaknesses, for which the consumers do not yet have the experience to judge. One such parameter is crosstalk, which is the incomplete isolation between the left and right channels, with e.g. ghosting as a visible distortion. There are two competing technologies on the market for glasses based 3DTV i.e. passive polarized and active shutter glasses. A large effort has been put into evaluating their pros and cons. For example the passive technique may give lower experienced resolution whereas the active technique may cause visible flicker.

In addition to the above described projects Acreo has also been involved in 3DTV standardization work within the Video Quality Experts Group (VQEG) and the International Committee for Display Metrology (ICDM).

Kjell Brunnström, Acreo

kjell.brunnstrom(at)acreo.se

VQEG meeting in Seoul, 6-10 June 2011

The Video Quality Experts Group Meeting (VQEG, www.vqeg.org) meeting 6^th – 10^th June took place in Seoul, South Korea and was attended by Kjell Brunnström, which is Co-chair of the Joint Effort Group (JEG) and the Independent Lab Group (ILG).

VQEG is an independent organization that drives standardization within video quality assessment in close collaboration with the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). At this meeting the topics were:

• subjective testing methodologies for 3D video quality (3D TV group)
• joint development of objective hybrid in-service measurement methods for video encoded with H.264/AVC (Joint Effort Group; wiki.vqeg-jeg.org)
• competitive evaluation of already developed hybrid objective video quality measurement methods (Hybrid group)
• Audio-visual video quality assessment (Multimedia group)
• Task based video quality assessment (Quality Recognition Task group)

Most attention is currently given the 3D TV group.

SID Display Week 2011, Society of Information Display

2011-05-15--20 in Los Angeles, USA

News from SID Conference and exhibition. Kjell Brunnström, Acreo, was attending the event with a presentation about Cross-Talk Measurements of Shutter-Glasses 3D Displays. Some of his other high-lights from the 3D TV display industry are aslo sumarized here, read more.

If you like to follow our travels for Broadband technology check out

http://www.acreo.se/en/Meet-Us-At

Published display tests made for Stockholms Läns Landsting

Acreo has made a comparable test of five displays for Stockholms Läns Landsting and the reports are made available at their website:

http://www.upphandling.sll.se/Modules/Contract/card/default.aspx?contractid=1810

Project references

You  can find references and examples among current projects as Quality of experience for 3D video. Results from earlier projects are found from On-Demand. ArcVQWin is a freeware for subjective video quality tests, and IPTV-interface offers a software use for video quality monitoring.

Display and Video Quality - Over half a century of experience and tradition

Acreo has over 50 years of experience within the field of image quality through the former Institute of Optical Research (IOF) that was founded in 1955. One of the objectives of IOF was to evaluate the image quality of cameras and lenses for military applications in a way that was independent of NATO and the Warsaw pact, thus supporting the neutrality policy of Sweden.

IOF continued this tradition even for other image generating media. One of the first projects was to develop a camera system for evaluation display parameters for the industry, e.g. Ericsson. The instrument, developed by IOF, was then used to measure the visual ergonomics of displays together with the institute for radiation protection "Statens Strålskyddsinstitut" (SSI).

IOF was appointed by Swedac to write a new measurement standard for displays. When the TCO labeling was extended to include visual ergonomics in TCO '95 IOF was one of the referral bodies. In 1999 Acreo was founded by a merger of IOF and IMC, and Acreo has continued the work that IOF started.

Acreo started a collaboration with Semko and the visual ergonomic part of TCO '99, TCO '03, TCO '05 and TCO '06 Media Displays were developed jointly. A cooperation that is still ongoing.

Complementary studies for TCO Development have also been done by Acreo, e.g. how the reflexes from the frame of the display are experienced in office work in different environments. Furthermore, Acreo supports TCO Development and Semko in answering questions from display manufacturers, performs tests and investigations to set reasonable demands and methods for different visual ergonomic parameters.

A related subject is Digital image and Video quality that Acreo has been involved in for more than 10 years. The work has consisted in the development of measurement methods and investigations into how viewers experience picture quality. Today the work has a big focus on investigating the quality issues with the emerging 3D TV, 3D mobile video as well as 3D video conference. Still, the research in 2D video and 2D display quality is continued as before. Standardization activities are done through participation within the Video Quality Experts Group (VQEG) and the continued collaboration with TCO Development.