Pixelmetrix Monitors Headends, QoE

Pixelmetrix featured its headend and QoE monitoring tools -- the Electronic Couch Potato (ECP), DVStation-IP3 and IPGen -- at Cable-Tec Expo last week.The ECP connects after the set-top box (STB) and provides feedback on service quality parameters to a central site. It emulates an end-user changing channels on a set-top via a built-in IR transmitter. Service plan verification, channel switching and multiple measurements on service quality for each channel are reported to a central management console. New for the ECP is the Video Quality Index (VQI). The video quality measurement tool scans all channels, identifies common video impairments such as macro-blocking, tiling and freeze frame, then combines them to an integrated metric. Results are consolidated across all channels and remote sites.For IP headend monitoring, the company offers the the DVStation-IP3 and IPGen. The DVStation-IP3 is a solution for video over IP quality assurance. It monitors multicast and unicast streams on a gigabit link. Supporting SPTS and MPTS, it provides coverage for IP, transport stream, SI and content. It also decodes video thumbnails for all services, encoding metadata, running blackout and freeze-frame tests. The IPGen is a headend-in-a-box solution for stress testing of video transmission networks. It can generate up to a gigabit of video traffic and allows for customizable test profiles with a variety of impairments.