By Weidong Mao, Comcast Cable
The paper presents an integrated Video On Demand (VOD) content library platform that supports virtually an unlimited amount of media content such as movies, TV shows, Internet video, and user generated content. This approach combines the advantages of the existing Managed Network approach and the emerging Over the Top approach in offering VOD services. Specifically, this paper describes the overall requirements and architectural evolution of Video On Demand (VOD) infrastructures to support large content libraries. The content libraries will enable a large amount of VOD content (SD and HD) as well as Internet Video content. The solution is based on the Comcast Next Generation On Demand (NGOD) architecture with a key extension of the Content Delivery Network (CDN) that utilizes national and regional IP network and library storage. Several key architectural building blocks and technology options are include content encoding and transcoding, real time and non real time content ingest, asset metadata and rights management, content library and asset propagation management, VOD backoffice integration, streaming server, as well as shared edge resources. Finally, this paper also discusses content formats, open interfaces, performance, scalability, reliability, and expandability to future on demand services.