Project UP-TO-US

Start date

The advances in IPTV technology enable a new model for service provisioning, moving from traditional broadcaster-centric TV services to a new user-centric TV model. This new model will allow users not only to access new services and functionalities from their providers, based upon their profiles and contexts, but also to become active parts in the content personalization through contributing in building their dynamic profiles. This IPTV model is promising in allowing low cost services for end-users and a revenue system for broadcasters based on personalized advertising methods, as well as new business opportunities for network operators and service providers.

The objective of the UP-TO-US project is to elaborate, prototype, and evaluate an open European solution allowing IPTV services personalization for managed networks (IPTV services provided by the operator) upon an IMS platform, through content adaptation according to each user context and the context of his environments (network and devices) while preserving his privacy. UP-TO-US focuses on two use-cases for service personalization: users in nomadic situations in a hotel (allowing the user to access his personalized IPTV content in a hotel and be billed on his own bill “My Personal Content Moves with Me”), and users’ mobility in his domestic sphere (allowing the user to move around within his domestic sphere while continuing accessing his IPTV service personalized according to his location and devices in his proximity “My Content Follows Me in a Customized Manner”). In order to achieve the objective of UP-TO-US, some enabler technologies will be developed and integrated to the IPTV/IMS architecture, these mainly includes: i) a context-aware module capable of monitoring and gathering the user and his environment contexts and feed them in a dynamic manner to the IPTV system, ii) a profiling management module, capable of constructing and dynamically updating the users profiles according to the various contexts, and iii) a privacy management module that will be responsible for managing the different privacy levels for each user and protecting the user personal information. Consequently, personalized services could be provided in which content is adapted according to users’ preference, Quality of Experience (QoE) requirements, and different contexts, while fostering trust between viewers and broadcasters through an efficient privacy management, and thus encouraging viewers to participate actively in this interactive user-centric TV paradigm through allowing their continuous contexts gathering.