By Yasser Syed, Ph.D., Cable Television Laboratories
This paper explores the challenges in video services and plant operations that the operator has to undergo to support on-demand services. In particular, the paper describe how, a common set of metadata tags will be needed to manage, describe, and present programs to the customer. Without a common set of metadata, there will be limits on the size of content catalogues, types of on-demand services, and search tools for these services. This paper first describes what is metadata and what are some of the types of metadata (Application, Association, Presentation, etc.) that are used today or considered for use. The next section describes how metadata supports an on-demand service in acquiring content, asset management, navigation, and user interfaces through the existing approaches enabled by CableLabs VOD Metadata specifications or through new approaches. Lastly this article describes how common metadata mechanisms can also be used to increase consumer demand for VoD content & services through guide-like interfaces and other approaches.