A software architecture for virtualized educational multimedia games in IPTV environments

摘要

T-Learning makes it possible to deliver educational content to home TVs. TV operators, which manage huge populations of devices such as set-top-boxes (STBs) in user homes, are considering t-Learning as an interesting option for expanding the service they offer. However, typical STB hardware configurations are limited in terms of satisfying operator needs and do not easily support all types of applications or content. In this work, we consider graphic educational games, which are not directly executable on typical STBs. To cover this gap and guarantee an enjoyable user experience, we present an architecture based on a combination of streaming and remote desktop protocols that relies on virtualized servers deployed in a cloud computing infrastructure. It features an original image-encoding signalling mechanism that identifies multimedia content in educational games and permits seamless protocol switching at the client side. This architecture is a complete technological solution to virtualize heavy educational games and execute them smoothly on STB light clients over Internet Protocol Television networks. We present performance results that show that our proposal is an efficient scalable solution to deliver t-Learning to home environments.