At the 2012 NAB Show last month in Las Vegas, Pixelmetrix introduced the OTT Media Grinder (OMG), a system for validation of an over-the-top delivery infrastructure.
With OMG operators can qualify and periodically audit OTT Service Quality by emulating thousands of OTT clients simultaneously — generating large amounts of OTT transaction traffic into the network.
The OMG simulates thousands of OTT clients, including the Apple iPhone and iPad, with multiple user-defined behaviors. Virtual pools of clients can behave well, for example, consuming content to the end, while other pools of clients can randomly change speeds, drop connections or flip between adaptive bit rates.
To quantify the QoS/QoE performance factors for OTT, Pixelmetrix has developed the VideoMargin Metrics, which give complete insight into the OTT delivery. Measuring network, HTTP and video layer performance, the seven VideoMargin parameters measure each aspect of the delivery domain spanning content server, network, authentication, individual client behavior and collective client behavior as well.
