Conclusions

The purpose of this thesis was to create a feasible structure for a VOD system capable of dealing with IPTV services in a reliable manner. We required a system capable of streaming video content to a client, and be administered through a web interface. By researching the available technologies, we could have a better perception of all the pieces that were needed to build this system.

Perhaps the biggest challenge was to properly expose our service to others, providing the most common tools. The Main Interface was where all this happened. Fully supported by a reliable and stable software, the Apache Web Server, our services could then be integrated in a variety of different applications, even in capable cellphones with a network connection. Security was also a major concern. Using the SOAP tools we could deliver a complete set of security options, that no other tool could provide. However, because of software incompatibilities and time issues, the REST implementation did not achieve the basic requisites included in the software specifications. Despite that with more development we would easily offer a complete REST solution.

The client application gave a good perception of what the future of Java might be in graphical terms. During the development, only the JavaFX script could allow the use of JavaFX tools, but in the future this will not be the case. The future Java development kit will have this tools available to develop with any Java application. Those tools demonstrated a new set of capabilities, indicating perhaps that Java might be the new Flash competitor for RIA applications.

The Live555 choice was very helpful and complete enough to deal with the Streaming services. Nothing more than creating a proper channel of communication was needed, to manage and retrieve all the session and statistic’s information. With such feature, we were able to fully control each available media server through a web-based interface. The SSL channels also provided the best security option in this communication. Yet the best part was perhaps the acknowledgement of the full potential that Live555 has.

VOD solutions do not come cheap. They have network costs, besides hardware and software. By using open-source tools, and joining them into one big application we proved to be possible to create a free VOD structure that could easily level with any available product, even by simulating a worst case scenario.

Future Work

The system that we created was not complete however. The VOD solutions nowadays have a lot more to offer. Our results demonstrated that features like request routing and content allocation, which are usually offered in commercial solutions, are mandatory in this kind of applications. Managing all communications as we did with our Main Interface could help us enable all those features.

More robust and sophisticated solutions were missing in the current implementation. The database could be arranged to provide some sort of special accounts where the users would have access only to certain video contents. Scaling those accounts through different privileges would also be an interesting option, with several available packages (e.g. Basic package, Premium package). A billing solution could provide those choices to the user.

In terms of administration, only the Main Interface was capable of providing a log with different types of levels. The Apache Server and the Axis2 logging tools both provide those options, with log outputs being written into a separate file. Live555 provides a debugging log but it required a lit bit more work to offer a complete log in a separate file. Ultimately this log files could converge into a single system log server, or be displayed in the administration interface. Other features should also be available, like controlling the number of clients that connect to each media server, logging those events, and provide content access statistics.

Preparing the system for other IPTV services should be the the number one priority. Music, and Live broadcast could be easily integrated, to provide the full IPTV package as the database and Live555 were already designed to support such kind of contents. The more diverse content we provided to the costumers, the more satisfied they would be.