Title

Consumers of video and other content in today's networks have very diverse display and computing equipment ranging from mobile phones and handheld devices to desktops, and HDTVs. Downloaded items range from simple stock quotes to news stories to full movies, as well as different segments within the same video content. Furthermore, multicast transmission to different users takes place over channels with very different qualities. Today's telecommunications techniques are confined to unique aspects and limited ranges of users' diversity, which they address separately either through source or through channel coding. In this talk, we will describe a Bell Labs approach to the problem which proposes integrated content preparation and delivery. We will also discuss some other emerging issues in content access and storage that arise because of some other aspects of network heterogeneity.