Traditional audiovisual multimedia applications can be synchronized with sensory effects to further enhance the users' quality of experience. These applications are named mulsemedia applications and stimulate other human senses, such as touch, smell, and taste. Some delays may occur when rendering sensory effects due to specific device capabilities and communication between the mulsemedia presentation engine (formatter) and actuators. In this context, this work proposes the automatic preparation of sensory effects to avoid synchronization faults during a mulsemedia application presentation. The automatic preparation of sensory effects depends on the effect type to be rendered. As proof of concept, we implemented the automatic preparation in the Ginga-NCL presentation engine. Furthermore, we present some use cases of the preparation mechanisms applied to sensory effects. Finally, an evaluation of our proposal is presented.

With mobile networks becoming one of the main means of accessing the Internet, Service Providers (SPs) and Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) have been investing considerable effort on service delivery mechanisms to improve end users' Quality of Experience (QoE). However, despite some advances, a lack of integration between SPs and MNOs is noticeable, which otherwise would allow for on-demand use of core and edge resources resulting in greater impact on users' QoE. This work presents Join-Me, a framework that allows SPs to transfer service modules into MNOs' infrastructure. Join-Me provides MNOs with the needed components to autonomously manage SPs' service modules, protecting mobile users' privacy and dynamically allocating the appropriate resources. Besides a framework that can be adapted to MNOs' deployed technologies, Join-Me provides SPs with an API for parameterizing the resource options to be used by their modules. An interactive UHD telemedicine service is evaluated as a proof of concept.

In multimedia applications, a short delay in content delivery may cause synchronization failures among media objects, decreasing the presentation quality and user quality of experience. Moreover, some applications incorporate sensory effects to audiovisual content, which are called mulsemedia applications, imposing even more challenges on application execution control. In order to lessen these problems, document authors or presentation systems can prepare media content and sensory effects in advance. This paper proposes a new operation type over media objects and sensory effects, represented as a new event type in multimedia and mulsemedia models, named preparation event. When sensory effects are modeled as first-class entities, mulsemedia authors may specify relationships that trigger actuator device preparation to ensure that sensory effects will be presented at the correct moment. In order to validate our proposal, some use cases of the preparation event in NCL (Nested Context Language) and Lua applications have been developed and are discussed in the paper. NCL is the standard authoring language for the Brazilian digital TV system declarative middleware, named Ginga-NCL, and also ITU-T H.761 standard for IPTV systems.

The specification of quality of service (QoS) requirements in traditional networks is limited by the high administrative cost of these environments. Nevertheless, newer network paradigms, as software-defined networks (SDNs), simplify and relaxes the management of networks. In this sense, SDN can provide a simple/effective way to develop QoS provisioning. In this paper, we propose a QoS provision architecture exploiting the capabilities of SDN. Our approach allows the specification of classes of service and also negotiates the QoS requirements between applications and the SDN network controller. The SDN controller, in turn, monitors the network and adjusts its performance through resource reservation and traffic prioritization. We developed a proof-of-concept of our proposal and, our experimental results show that the additional routines present low overhead, whereas -for a given test application- we observe a reduction of up to 47% in transfer times.

This paper focuses on the support provided by NCL (Nested Context Language) to relate objects with imperative code content and declarative hypermedia-objects (objects with declarative code content specifying hypermedia documents). NCL is the declarative language of the Brazilian Terrestrial Digital TV System (SBTVD) supported by its middleware called Ginga. NCL and Ginga are part of ISDB standards and also of ITU-T Recommendations for IPTV services.

Nested Context Language (NCL) is the declarative language of the Brazilian Terrestrial Digital TV System. NCL is part of ISDB (International Standard for Digital Broadcasting) standards and also the ITU-T Recommendation H.761 for IPTV services. This paper presents, discusses, and illustrates the NCL hierarchical control model for multiple exhibition device support. Based on this model, multiple devices are orchestrated to run a DTV application in cooperation. Two types of multiple device exhibitions are distinguished. Those where the same content is shown in a set of devices under a unique control, and those where content is under each individual device control, working completely independent. In this last case, depending on viewer interactions, the resulting presented content can differ from a device to another. Examples of NCL applications using both options are presented and discussed.

Intermedia synchronization is related with spatial and temporal relationships among media objects that compound a DTV application. From the server side (usually a broadcaster's server or a Web Server) to receivers, end-to-end intermedia synchronization support must be provided. Based on application specifications, several abstract data structures should be created to guide all synchronization control processes. A special data structure, a labeled digraph called HTG (Hypermedia Temporal Graph) is proposed in this paper as the basis of all other data structures. From HTG, receivers derive a presentation plan to orchestrate media content presentations that make up a DTV application. From this plan other data structures are derived to estimate when media players should be instantiated and when data contents should be retrieved from a DSM-CC carousel or from a return channel. If the return channel provides QoS support, another data structure is derived from the presentation plan, in order to determine when resource reservation should take place. For content pushed by broadcasters, HTG is used in the server side as the basis for building the carousel plan, a data structure that guides the order and frequency that media objects should be broadcasted.