Integrating personal media and Digital TV with QoS guarantees using virtualized set-top boxes: Architecture and performance measurements

Nowadays, users consume a lot of functionality in their home coming from a service provider located in the Internet. While the home network is typically shielded off as much as possible from the `outside world´, the supplied services could be greatly extended if it was possible to use local information. In this article, an extended service is presented that integrates the user´s multimedia content, scattered over multiple devices in the home network, into the Electronic Program Guide (EPG) of the Digital TV. We propose to virtualize the set-top box, by migrating all functionality except user interfacing to the service provider infrastructure. The media in the home network is discovered through standard Universal Plug and Play (UPnP), of which the QoS functionality is exploited to ensure high quality playback over the home network, that basically is out of the control of the service provider. The performance of the subsystems are analysed.