Viewer Monitoring with Electronic Couch Potato

What does the ECP^™ monitor?

Monitors and reports Quality of Experience from end user point of view

Controls STB through built-in IR controller to emulate the end-user changing channels

Reports video freeze/blackout and audio silence/tone on STB decoded video

Telepresence: Live service thumbnails and streaming of content from remote site to central consolidator

Automatic checking of actual channel switch time

ECP Consolidator Engine™ software control and correlates thousands of end points

Flexible architecture supporting user-programmable test scenarios

Remote STB Reboot (Hard and Soft) STB from a central NOC location

Independent of any DRM/encryption in the network

ECP ^™ Datasheet

How to use the ECP^™

Operational Monitoring
The ECP™ provides the operator with a tool to truly evaluate program availability, correctness and Quality of Service from any location in the network on a 24/7 basis, and most importantly on signals ready to be consumed by a subscriber.

Service Validation At Reference
DSLAM/EdgeQAM/CMTS Using a reference DSLAM in IPTV or EdgeQAM/CMTS in Cable networks is a common practice to design and optimize service lineups. The ECP™ deployed within the head end with a reference DSLAM enables the team to verify the correctness of the television services – line-up, availability and performance, and can qualify if the problems being experienced by subscribers are network introduced.

STB Regression Testing and Performance Benchmarking
The Regression test application of the ECP for STB performance is critical to STB manufacturers, middleware vendors and also operations and labs of services providers to benchmark the performance of STB software releases/comparison among different STB types before introduction into service operations.

Application Notes

Electronic Couch Potato^™

ECP ^™ Flyer

The Electronic Couch Potato™ and Consolidator Engine™ solution is a “true” service assurance tool enabling operators to monitor and measure Quality of Experience from end-users’ perspective. Monitoring key television parameters after the STB makes the deployment of the ECP independent of any encryption systems and proprietary protocols employed in service operations. This is key to making the ECP a ubiquitously deployable solution and useful in all forms of television delivery networks – Cable, IPTV and Satellite transmission.

What is the Electronic Couch Potato™ The ECP™ is a “programmable test robot” which drives a STB using the built-in IR controller and analyzes the decoded signal from a consumer grade STB to fully and truly evaluates the analog output. With a flexible user-programming environment using the TCL language, common in automated test environments, the ECP is a flexible and future-proof platform for verifying the decoded analog audio and video from the STB. The ability to program each ECP™ to run a different test script provides the operator the flexibility to utilize each ECP™ for a well-defined, customized and repeatable operation within the network. Each ECP™ reports measurements to a central device - The Consolidator Engine™. Multiple service quality parameters relating to decoded audio and video are intuitively presented on the central management console.
The Consolidator Engine™ The sole objective of the Consolidator Engine™ is to optimally present meaningful information to the operator about the service being delivered to the customer - information that enables them to solve a problem within the shortest time possible. Multiple ECPs™ spread across the end-points of the network at geographically distributed locations send back channel-specific telemetry to the Consolidator Engine™. The Consolidator Engine™ is the configuration and monitoring console for ECPs™ spread across the last mile distribution points of the complete network. The Consolidator Engine™ presents to the operator the status of all broadcasted channels scanned by ECPs™. Error notifications are marked in red, otherwise, everything is well with the quality of channel delivery. The multiple parameters monitored by each ECP™ for each channel are not presented as mere data, but as information presented in a way to report the status of service quality in a particular territory or an overall system-wide status.