Solutions for Over-the-Top (OTT) Television OTT Media Grinder screenshot

While Over-the-Top (OTT) television delivery is surrounded by much hype and excitement, few are aware that the reliable HTTP/TCP transmission method used for OTT completely destroys the fundamental understanding and practices for managing delivery quality. From the days of analog television to today’s digital transmission standards, reception impairments were all about “losing something”. You lost signal, lost synchronization, or lost packets. And overwhelmingly, it is lost packets that cause the bulk of all problems in today’s MPEG systems – IPTV, DVB-S, DVB-T, etc.

Simply put, reliable TCP connections don’t lose packets. If a packet is lost, a retransmission request is made and the packet is resent. Therefore, reliably delivering TV content to the next generation of devices (iPhones, iPads, etc) requires a new toolset for managing QoS and QoE. Delivered over http, traditional methods no longer apply.

The OTT Media Grinder from Pixelmetrix helps you quantify OTT network and server performance by simulating thousands of OTT clients – each requesting different assets at different bit rates.

Key Features

  • Robust OTT network load testing
  • Simulate thousands of iPhone/iPad clients from a compact 1RU package
  • Coordinated load testing to attack from multiple locations
  • HTTP level and Content level metrics combined to Pixelmetrix VideoMargin™ indices for OTT QoS and QoE
  • Centralized reporting and results aggregation