Reducing Channel Change Time by System Architecture Changes in DVB-S/C/T Set Top Boxes

Abstract

© 1975-2011 IEEE. This paper presents a software architecture that supports fast channel change in digital video broadcasting-satellite/cable/terrestrial (DVB-S/C/T) set top boxes (STBs). Long channel zapping time issue has first been addressed in the context of IPTV STBs, where it presented an obstacle for successful commercialization of the IPTV. In DVB-S/C/T, the channel zapping time has not been in the focus so much, but with the development of tuners and with the appearance of STB boards with more tuners and decoders, the conditions have been met for its further reduction. The aim is to improve the user's quality of experience. The properties of our architecture have been discussed both with respect to resource management and to efficient processing of callbacks and notifications. The experimental results show the reduction of channel zapping time from about 2.6 s to less than 700 ms on the average.