skip to main content
research-article

Dissecting User Behaviors for a Simultaneous Live and VoD IPTV System

Published: 17 April 2014 Publication History

Abstract

IPTV services deployed nowadays often consist of both live TV and Video-on-Demand (VoD), offered by the same service provider to the same pool of users over the same managed network. Understanding user behaviors in such a setting is hence an important step for system modelling and optimization. Previous studies on user behavior on video services were on either live TV or VoD. For the first time, we conduct an in-depth large-scale behavior study for IPTV users offering simultaneously live TV and VoD choices at the same time. Our data is from the largest IPTV service provider in China, offering hundreds of live channels and hundreds of thousands of VoD files, with traces covering more than 1.9 million users over a period of 5 months. This large dataset provides us a unique opportunity to cross-compare user viewing behaviors for these services on the same platform, and sheds valuable insights on how users interact with such a simultaneous system.
Our results lead to new understanding on IPTV user behaviors which have strong implications on system design. For example, we find that the average holding time for VoD is significantly longer than live TV. live TV users tend to surf more. However, if such channel surfing is discounted, the holding times of both services are not much different. While users in VoD tend to view HD longer, channel popularity for live TV is much less dependent on its video quality. In contrast to some popular assumptions on user interactivity, the transitions among live TV, VoD, and offline modes are far from a Markov model.

References

[1]
Henrik Abrahamsson and Mats Bjorkman. 2013. Caching for iptv distribution with time-shift. In Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Computing, Networking and Communications (ICNC'13). 916--921.
[2]
Dakshi Agrawal, Mandis S. Beigi, Chatschik Bisdikian, and Kang-Won Lee. 2007. Planning and managing the IPTV service deployment. In Proceedings of the 10th IFIP/IEEE International Symposium on Integrated Network Management (IM'07). 353--362.
[3]
Siddhartha Annapureddy, Saikat Guha, Christos Gkanssidis, Dinan Gunawardena, and Pablo R. Rodriguez. 2007. Is high-quality vod feasible using p2p swarming? In Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on World Wide Web (WWW'07). 903--912.
[4]
Ethendranath Bommaiah, Katherine Guo, Markus Hofmann, and Sanjoy Paul. 2000. Design and implementation of a caching system for streaming media over the internet. In Proceedings of the 6th IEEE Real-Time Technology and Applications Symposium (RTAS'00). 111--121.
[5]
Philip Branch, Greg Egan, and Bruce Tonkin. 1999. Modeling interactive behaviour of a video based multimedia system. In Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC'99). 978--982.
[6]
Meeyoung Cha, Pablo Rodriguez, Jon Crowcroft, Sue Moon, and Xavier Amatrianin. 2008. Watching television over an ip network. In Proceedings of the 8th ACM SIGCOMM Conference on Internet Measurement (IMC'08). 71--84.
[7]
Shueng-Han Gary Chan. 2001. Operation and cost optimization of a distributed servers architecture for on-demand video services. IEEE Comm. Lett. 5, 9, 384--386.
[8]
Shueng-Han Gary Chan and Fouad Tobagi. 2001. Distributed servers architecture for networked video services. IEEE/ACM Trans. Netw. 9, 2, 125--136.
[9]
Shueng-Han Gary Chan and Siu-Hong Ivan Yeung. 2002. Client buffering techniques for scalable video broadcasting over broadband networks with low user delay. IEEE Trans. Broadcast. 48, 1, 19--26.
[10]
Bin Chang, Liang Dai, Yi Cui, and Yuan Xue. 2008. On feasibility of p2p on-demand streaming via empirical vod user behavior analysis. In Proceedings of the 28th International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems Workshops (ICDCSW'08). 7--11.
[11]
Bin Cheng, Lex Stein, Hai Jin, and Zheng Zhang. 2008. Towards cinematic internet video-on-demand. In Proceedings of the 3rd ACM SIGOPS/EuroSys European Conference on Computer Systems (Eurosys'08). 109--122.
[12]
Ludmila Cherkasova and Minaxi Gupta. 2004. Analysis of enterprise media server workloads: Access patterns, locality, content evolution, and rates of change. IEEE/ACM Trans. Netw. 12, 781--794.
[13]
Joonho Choi, Abu S. Reaz, and Biswanath Mukherjee. 2012. A survey of user behavior in vod service and bandwidth-saving multicast streaming schemes. IEEE Comm. Surv. Tutorials 14, 1, 156--169.
[14]
Florin Dobrian, Asad Awan, Dilip Joseph, Aditya Ganjam, Jibin Zhan, Vyas Sekar, Ion Stoica, and Hui Zhang. 2011. Understanding the impact of video quality on user engagement. In Proceedings of the ACM SIGCOMM Conference (SIGCOMM'11). 362--373.
[15]
Vijay Gopalakrishnan, Rittwik Jana, Ralph Knag, K. K. Ramakrishnan, Deborah F. Swayne, and Vinay A. Vaishampayan. 2010. Characterizing interactive behavior in a large-scale operational iptv environment. In Proceedings of the 29th Conference on Information Communications (INFOCOM'10). 1--5.
[16]
Gonca Grsun, Mark Crovella, and Ibrahim Matta. 2011. Describing and forecasting video access patterns. In Proceedings of the 30th Conference on Information Communications (INFOCOM'11). 16--20.
[17]
Xiaojun Hei, Chao Liang, Jian Liang, Yong Liu, and Keith Ross. 2007. A measurement study of a large-scale p2p iptv system. IEEE Trans. Multimedia 9, 8, 1672--1687.
[18]
Choonhwa Lee, Euiyoung Hwang, and Dohoo Pyeon. 2012. A popularity-aware prefetching scheme to support interactive p2p streaming. IEEE Trans. Consumer Electron. 58, 2, 382--388.
[19]
Chae Young Lee, Chang Ki Hong, and Kang Yong Lee. 2010. Reducing channel zapping time in iptv based on user's channel selection behaviors. IEEE Trans. Broadcast. 56, 3, 321--330.
[20]
Ning Liu, Huajie Cui, Shueng-Han Gary Chan, Zhipeng Chen, Yirong Zhuang, Bing Wang, Subhabrata Sen, Micah Adler, and Don Towsley. 2002. Optimal proxy cache allocation for efficient streaming media distribution. In Proceedings of the 21st Annual Joint Conference of the IEEE Computer and Communications Societies (INFOCOM'02), vol. 3. 1726--1735.
[21]
Jian-Guang Luo, Qian Zhang, Yun Tang, and Shi-Qiang Yang. 2009. A trace-driven approach to evaluate the scalability of p2p-based video-on-demand service. IEEE Trans. Parallel Distrib. Syst. 20, 59--70.
[22]
Mu Mu, William Knowles, and Nicholas Race. 2012. Understanding your needs: An adaptive vod system. In Proceedings of the IEEE International Symposium on Multimedia (ISM'12). 255--260.
[23]
Tongqing Qiu, Zihui Ge, Seungjoon Lee, Jia Wang, Jun Xu, and Qi Zhao. 2009a. Modeling user activities in a large iptv system. In Proceedings of the 9th ACM SIGCOMM Conference on Internet Measurement (IMC'09). 430--441.
[24]
Tongqing Qiu, Zihui Ge, Seungjoon Lee, Jia Wang, Qi Zhao, and Jun Xu. 2009b. Modeling channel popularity dynamics in a large iptv system. In Proceedings of the 11th International Joint Conference on Measurement and Modeling of Computer Systems (SIGMETRICS'09). 275--286.
[25]
Subhabrata Sen, Jennifer Rexford, and Don Towsley. 1999. Proxy prefix caching for multimedia streams. In Proceedings of the 18th Annual Joint Conference of the IEEE Computer and Communications Societies (INFOCOM'99). 1310--1319.
[26]
Thomas Silverston and Oliver Fourmaux. 2007. Measuring p2p iptv systems. In Proceedings of the International Workshop on Network and Operating Systems Support for Digital Audio and Video (NOSSDAV'07).
[27]
Donald E. Smith. 2007. IPTV bandwidth demand: Multicast and channel surfing. In Proceedings of the 26th IEEE International Conference on Computer Communications (INFOCOM'07). 2183--2187.
[28]
Kunwadee Sripanidkulchai, Bruce Maggs, and Hui Zhang. 2004. An analysis of live streaming workloads on the internet. In Proceedings of the 4th ACM SIGCOMM Conference on Internet Measurement (IMC'04). 41--54.
[29]
Ihsan Ullah, Guillaume Doyen, Gregory Bonnet, and Dominique Gaiti. 2012. A survey and synthesis of user behavior measurements in p2p streaming systems. IEEE Comm. Surv. Tutorials 14, 3, 734--749.
[30]
Eveline Veloso, Virgilio Almeida, Wagner Meira Jr., Azer Bestavros, and Shudong Jin. 2006. A hierarchical characterization of a live streaming media workload. IEEE/ACM Trans. Netw. 14, 133--146.
[31]
Young J. Won, Mi-Jung Choi, Byung-Chul Park, James W. Hong, Hee-Won Lee, Chan-Kyu Hwang, and Jae-Hyoung Yoo. 2008. End-user iptv traffic measurement of residential broadband access networks. In Proceedings of the Network Operations and Management Symposium Workshops (NOMS'08). 95--100.
[32]
Di Wu, Chao Liang, Yong Liu, and Keith W. Ross. 2009a. View-upload decoupling: A redesign of multi-channel p2p video systems. In Proceedings of the 28th Annual Joint Conference of the IEEE Computer and Communications Societies (INFOCOM'09). 2726--2730.
[33]
Di Wu, Yong Liu, and Keith W. Ross. 2009b. Queuing network models for multi-channel p2p live streaming systems. In Proceedings of the 28th Annual Joint Conference of the IEEE Computer and Communications Societies (INFOCOM'09). 73--81.
[34]
Qiufang Ying, Yuchun Guo, Yishuai Chen, Xiaoying Tan, and Wei Zhu. 2011. Understanding users' access failure and patience in large-scale p2p vod systems. In Proceedings of the 4th IET International Conference on Wireless, Mobile and Multimedia Networks (ICWMMN'11). 283--287.
[35]
Hongliang Yu, Dongdong Zheng, Ben Y. Zhao, and Weimin Zheng. 2006. Understanding user behavior in large-scale video-on-demand systems. In Proceedings of the 1st ACM SIGOPS/EuroSys European Conference on Computer Systems (EuroSys'06). 333--344.
[36]
Tieying Zhang, Zhenhua Li, Huawei Shen, Yan Huang, and Xueqi Cheng. 2011. A white-box empirical study of p2p-vod systems: Several unconventional new findings. In Proceedings of 20th International Conference on Computer Communications and Networks (ICCCN'11). 1--6.

Cited By

View all
  • (2023)Design and Application of High Fidelity IPTV CDN Test-bed Based on User Viewing Behavior Model2023 International Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing (IWCMC)10.1109/IWCMC58020.2023.10182644(182-187)Online publication date: 19-Jun-2023
  • (2023)A Survey on Multi-AP Coordination Approaches Over Emerging WLANs: Future Directions and Open ChallengesIEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials10.1109/COMST.2023.334416726:2(858-889)Online publication date: 19-Dec-2023
  • (2022)Popularity-Guided Cost Optimization for Live Streaming in Mobile Edge ComputingWireless Communications & Mobile Computing10.1155/2022/55629952022Online publication date: 1-Jan-2022
  • Show More Cited By

Index Terms

  1. Dissecting User Behaviors for a Simultaneous Live and VoD IPTV System

      Recommendations

      Comments

      Information & Contributors

      Information

      Published In

      cover image ACM Transactions on Multimedia Computing, Communications, and Applications
      ACM Transactions on Multimedia Computing, Communications, and Applications  Volume 10, Issue 3
      April 2014
      140 pages
      ISSN:1551-6857
      EISSN:1551-6865
      DOI:10.1145/2602979
      Issue’s Table of Contents
      Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

      Publisher

      Association for Computing Machinery

      New York, NY, United States

      Publication History

      Published: 17 April 2014
      Accepted: 01 February 2014
      Revised: 01 December 2013
      Received: 01 September 2013
      Published in TOMM Volume 10, Issue 3

      Permissions

      Request permissions for this article.

      Check for updates

      Author Tags

      1. IPTV
      2. VoD
      3. live TV
      4. user behavior

      Qualifiers

      • Research-article
      • Research
      • Refereed

      Funding Sources

      Contributors

      Other Metrics

      Bibliometrics & Citations

      Bibliometrics

      Article Metrics

      • Downloads (Last 12 months)10
      • Downloads (Last 6 weeks)0
      Reflects downloads up to 17 Feb 2025

      Other Metrics

      Citations

      Cited By

      View all
      • (2023)Design and Application of High Fidelity IPTV CDN Test-bed Based on User Viewing Behavior Model2023 International Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing (IWCMC)10.1109/IWCMC58020.2023.10182644(182-187)Online publication date: 19-Jun-2023
      • (2023)A Survey on Multi-AP Coordination Approaches Over Emerging WLANs: Future Directions and Open ChallengesIEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials10.1109/COMST.2023.334416726:2(858-889)Online publication date: 19-Dec-2023
      • (2022)Popularity-Guided Cost Optimization for Live Streaming in Mobile Edge ComputingWireless Communications & Mobile Computing10.1155/2022/55629952022Online publication date: 1-Jan-2022
      • (2022)A Novel Method for IPTV Customer Behavior Analysis Using Time SeriesIEEE Access10.1109/ACCESS.2022.316440910(37003-37015)Online publication date: 2022
      • (2021)An Approximation Algorithm to Maximize User Capacity for an Auto-Scaling VoD SystemIEEE Transactions on Multimedia10.1109/TMM.2020.303106823(3714-3725)Online publication date: 2021
      • (2021)IPTV Channel Zapping Recommendation With Attention MechanismIEEE Transactions on Multimedia10.1109/TMM.2020.298409423(538-549)Online publication date: 2021
      • (2020)Scoring HighProceedings of the 28th ACM International Conference on Multimedia10.1145/3394171.3414016(807-815)Online publication date: 12-Oct-2020
      • (2020)Simplified Theoretical Model based Self-adaptive Packet Reception Rate Estimation in Sensor Networks2020 IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference (WCNC)10.1109/WCNC45663.2020.9120755(1-6)Online publication date: 25-May-2020
      • (2020)Estimating Video Popularity From Past Request Arrival Times in a VoD SystemIEEE Access10.1109/ACCESS.2020.29664958(19934-19947)Online publication date: 2020
      • (2020)Adaptive cache pre-forwarding policy for distributed deep learningComputers and Electrical Engineering10.1016/j.compeleceng.2020.10655882:COnline publication date: 1-Mar-2020
      • Show More Cited By

      View Options

      Login options

      Full Access

      View options

      PDF

      View or Download as a PDF file.

      PDF

      eReader

      View online with eReader.

      eReader

      Figures

      Tables

      Media

      Share

      Share

      Share this Publication link

      Share on social media