Qoe Analysis of a Peer-to-peer Television System

Peer-to-peer (P2P) TV technology is seen as an emerging alternative to the current systems of providing TV channels and video services over the Internet. However, little information is available on users’ Quality of Experience (QoE) on P2P systems. We discuss the general problems behind subjective assessments of P2P streaming, and present a discussion on the factors affecting QoE for P2P TV. We also introduce a method of assessing a user’s QoE on P2P TV systems, and we show preliminary results from our subjective QoE study of a popular P2P TV system – Joost. Qualitative responses from the subjective study suggest that long start-up delays and lack of smooth continuity during video playback significantly affected viewing experience. Understanding the user’s QoE on such scalable and cheap platforms has the potential to revolutionize existing Internet video streaming business models (pricing models, etc), in addition to aiding providers in better server resource management. Finally, we discuss the technical and open issues that need to be resolved in order for a successful deployment of a large scale P2P TV system.