Project: Multi-Play dimensions for User-Centric Home & Extended-Home Services

In 2012 in Europe (2011 in France), a revolutionary phenomenon is bound to happen: the release of the analogue frequencies in the UHF/VHF band originally used for the analogue TV distribution. The European Parliament stated that the increased spectrum efficiency of digital terrestrial television should allow for around 100MHz of digital dividend to be re-allocated to mobile broadband and other services. Therefore, the reallocation will be shared between digital TV, high-speed mobile broadband and possibly others, in order to serve the end-user with more and more services and more and more efficiency. _x000D_In parallel, the deployment of fixed technologies such as fibber optical, xDSL is extending, providing high bandwidth capacities in order to deliver advanced services._x000D_Therefore, numerous services are aimed to be deployed in the near future: _x000D_• By the Digital TV operator through the broadcasting (DVB-T/-H) network; _x000D_• By the mobile operator through its 3G/3G+/LTE network,;_x000D_• By the fixed operator through its xDSL/fibber network;_x000D_• By other operators through their specific network (WiMax, Cable, Satellite, etc.)._x000D__x000D_Technology wise, this multiplicity may bring about advantages, yet it is not profitable to the end-user today because of a profound lack of convergence between the various technologies and services. The service/network/terminal/user component is strongly inter-related. The service is still not de-correlated from the network and the terminal, and dedicated to one end-user only. For example, inside a home, there is a need for a DVB-T receiver for each end-user willing to watch DTV programs. Likewise, only one home user at a time can receive and make calls using the same fixed telephone line. More, a computer is mandatory to the end-user willing to read/write emails (or texts in electronic formats). The SMS/MMS are only received through the mobile operator network into the end-user mobile phone._x000D_Commercially, it fosters the generation of a new market: the Digital Home Market. Focusing on the media server appliance, it is reported that consumer electronics-based networked media server (evolving from Digital Set Top Boxes, PVR or DVDs) will rival PCs in terms of units sold per year up to 2015, with probably both products sharing the best part of the home server market. It is shown that by 2010 the most likely scenario will see 26 Million units of multimedia home servers sold Europe wide (source: iSupply Corp., 2007)._x000D__x000D_The MULTI@HOME project is set to spur a decisive step forward to the convergence of next generation networks and services by providing Multi-Play dimensions into a home environment, and doing so, give users the entire benefit of their services. _x000D_The innovative aspect is to completely de-correlate the service from the network and terminal so that it can be fully exploited by the end-user and adapted to his context. Towards this, a Home Gateway solution will be conceived, capable of receiving the services from all the existing operators’ networks and achieving the necessary functions to appropriately convert and retransmit them to the end-user. The objective of the Home Gateway is to be multi-user, multi-service, multi-terminal. Since the users need simplicity and coherence, an intuitive user interface software will be proposed for deployment in any terminal, for the request and interaction of/with the services. This way, end-users inside the home will be able to fully exploit all their services from their chosen terminal (smartphone, PDA, PC, TV-set, …), whatever the service and whatever the terminal._x000D_In order to enable this, the Home Gateway will rely on multiple interfaces, ranging from DSL-based, IMS-based 3G card, DVB-T, etc. on the network operator side, and Ethernet-based on the home network side (Ethernet, WiFi). A complete modular system will be created, with ground-breaking hardware/software components, including multiplicity and adaptation functionalities._x000D__x000D_The project consortium is composed of a balance of commercial organisations of which fields of expertise cover all CO stages of the realization of the solution, from software development for digital applications (BSOFT, OPTIBASE and VIOTECH) to hardware integration (TELSEY)._x000D_Furthermore, the Ps of the MULTI@HOME project have extensive experience into the participation and the management of international collaborative projects (EUREKA, FP6, FP7) and some of the consortium members have already collaborated in the past with each other. It is expected that these factors will ease considerably interactions among members and intensify the expected synergies.

Acronym	MULTI@HOME (Reference Number: 4724)
Duration	01/07/2009 - 30/06/2011
Project Topic	MULTI@HOME aims at developing an innovative, user-friendly and ready-to-market solution capable to manage user's context profile and grant simple, secured and optimal anywhere, anytime, anyhow access and provision of audiovisual and multimedia services, including adaptation features.
Project Results (after finalisation)	• Elaboration of an innovative Home Gateway, able to manage the User Context Profile, for residential usage. It has client-server enhanced functionalities, producing intelligent processing and service adaptation according to the receptive devices, the environments and the user’s preferences and characteristics. The Home Gateway is a multiple interfaces component, concretizing the concept of convergence of networks, from the broadcasting, telecom and Internet worlds, with improved technologies and solutions._x000D_• The CO features provided by the project through the “Home Gateway system” are:_x000D_ o Enhanced Multi-Play services. Specifically, basic multimedia services (VOD, IPTV, VoIP, IM, twitter, data...) are enriched with _x000D_ ambient (ubiquitous availability of services), user-centric dimensions that improve the End-User experience with digital _x000D_ residential services;_x000D_ o “User Context Profile” enabling ambient metadata management for home and remote user preferences and the provision of _x000D_ service continuity, subscription plan continuity and rights-management continuity / ubiquity;_x000D_ o Monitoring of the Quality of Service across the diverse services and network/terminal conditions. This specific aspect is of _x000D_ key importance to guarantee the best possible service experience to the user;_x000D_ o Remote Multi-Pane User Playout, offering the End-User the possibility to display multiple streams simultaneously side-by-_x000D_ side, to view live and offline video programs, arrange them in groups and create a personalized dynamic program / channel _x000D_ guide, to easily grant/restrict authorized viewers (family members, business colleagues, etc.) to have full or partial access to _x000D_ selected content;_x000D_• Integration of the above specified modules and features into a hardware equipment configurable according to the clients’_x000D_ specifications._x000D_
Network	Eurostars
Call	Eurostars Cut-Off 2

Project partner

Number	Name	Role	Country
4	BSOFT Srl	Observer	Italy
4	OPTIBASE Ltd	Partner	Israel
4	TELSEY SPA	Partner	Italy
4	VIOTECH COMMUNICATIONS	Coordinator	France