Digital Video Distribution Through High Speed Network

Digital television is the future of the television broadcast field. Many new service concerns digital television emerged. Meanwhile, computer related technique also have rapid progress, such as higher resolution, high CPU speed, high graphic card performance, etc. Video can be decoded with software alone. And also, computer network are much faster than before. All these improvement make it possible to distribute digital television data through computer network and finally be shown on user's computer.There are already many kinds of way that distributing Digital TV through internet, for example, IPTV, VOD, etc. Take VOD as an example, it only sends the program that user demand. Its biggest advantage is its flexibility. A TV user doesn't have to wait before the television to see their favorite program, but just demand it. From the perspective of computer network, it is a P2P connection. The shortage for all P2P connection is its bandwidth. If too many users are using the P2P service simultaneously, they will encounter a network lag. And also, it can not distribute high definition video. A high definition video, like DVD stands video, with its resolution 720*576, 25 frame per seconds, will be a nightmare for a computer network.In this paper, a method of distributing digital television based on high-speed network will be discussed. We will try to keep the quality of digital TV, while using computer network. i.e., distributing the program through multi-cast way, with UDP connect. Another advantage of this is that we don't need any additional devices. The main technique used here, multi-cast and DirectShow, are already used widely. Of course, we have our shortage; we can not send user his requested video, because we would not establish an one-on-one connection with the user. However, it is useful as an alternative attempts to mix digital TV and computer.